Project description:We analyzed the nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat receptors (NLRs) of 26 recently sequenced diverse founder lines from the maize nested association mapping (NAM) population and compared them to the R gene complement present in a wild relative of maize, Zea luxurians.
Project description:RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) in plants is a well-characterized example of RNA interference-related transcriptional gene silencing. To determine the relationships between RdDM and heterochromatin in the repeat-rich maize (Zea mays) genome, we performed whole-genome analyses of several heterochromatic features: dimethylation of lysine 9 and lysine 27 (H3K9me2 and H3K27me2), chromatin accessibility, DNA methylation, and small RNAs; we also analyzed two mutants that affect these processes, mediator of paramutation1 and zea methyltransferase2.
Project description:Genetic relationship of a newly discovered teosinte from Nicaragua, Zea nicaraguensis with waterlogging tolerance, was determined based on randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences of nuclear ribosomal DNA using 14 accessions from Zea species. RAPD analysis showed that a total of 5,303 fragments were produced by 136 random decamer primers, of which 84.86% bands were polymorphic. RAPD-based UPGMA analysis demonstrated that the genus Zea can be divided into section Luxuriantes including Zea diploperennis, Zea luxurians, Zea perennis and Zea nicaraguensis, and section Zea including Zea mays ssp. mexicana, Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, Zea mays ssp. huehuetenangensis and Zea mays ssp. mays. ITS sequence analysis showed the lengths of the entire ITS region of the 14 taxa in Zea varied from 597 to 605 bp. The average GC content was 67.8%. In addition to the insertion/deletions, 78 variable sites were recorded in the total ITS region with 47 in ITS1, 5 in 5.8S, and 26 in ITS2. Sequences of these taxa were analyzed with neighbor-joining (NJ) and maximum parsimony (MP) methods to construct the phylogenetic trees, selecting Tripsacum dactyloides L. as the outgroup. The phylogenetic relationships of Zea species inferred from the ITS sequences are highly concordant with the RAPD evidence that resolved two major subgenus clades. Both RAPD and ITS sequence analyses indicate that Zea nicaraguensis is more closely related to Zea luxurians than the other teosintes and cultivated maize, which should be regarded as a section Luxuriantes species.
Project description:This is a cell culture based study to asses the impact of ZEA (Zearalenone) and E. coli co-contamination on IPEC cells, these is a normal epithelial cell line isolated from a new born piglet. ZEA is a mycotoxin with a negative impact in human health. The microarray is a custom Agilent Technology array slide with the AMAID: 05685.
Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study are studies the response of annual Zea mays ssp. mexicana L. under cold and drought stress Methods: The seedlings of zea may ssp. mexicana L. were generated by Illumina HiSeq2500 deep-sequencing. In order to generate a global overview of Zea mexicana transcriptome data, 3 of complement DNA (cDNA) libraries were prepared from RNA isolated from root, stem, and leave mixed tissues of Zea Mexicana from Control (24℃), Cold (4℃) and Drought (PEG2000, 20%) treatments and each teatment has two repetitions. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were merged and de novo to generate all transcripts set by Trinity with default parameter, which will be treated as reference genome. The number of paired-reads of each sample were mapped to reference genome by Bowtie software v1.1.1 and the number of mapped reads were calculated by RSEM. qRT-PCR validation was performed using BIO-RAD CFX96 sequence detection system and SYBR Green assays. Results: Using RNA-Seq technology with the Trinity assembled method, we generated a seedling plant transcriptome at a sequencing size of 51.78Gb of Zea mays ssp. mexicana L. from pooled RNA samples which included control (CK), cold (4℃) and drought (PEG2000, 20%) stressed plant samples. A total of 414,232,462 high quality clean reads were used to conduct de novo assembly and annotation of genes without reference genome information. All of these reads were assembled into 251,145 transcripts (N50 = 1,269 bp) and 184,280 unigenes (N50 = 923 bp). A total of 3,504 up-regulated and 1,220 down-regulated genes were detected under cold stress and 532 up-regulated and 82 down-regulated genes were detected under drought stress. A Venn diagram indicated that 208 genes were affected by both cold and drought stresses. 3 cold stress pathways and 5 drought related pathways showed significant KEGG pathways. Functional enrichment analyses identified many common or specific biological processes and gene sets in response to drought and cold stresses. The ABA dependent pathway, trehalose synthetic pathway and CBF6 gene of ICE1-CBF pathway may play important roles in the DEGs co-up-regulated by both stresses of Zea mays ssp. mexicana L. Conclusions: We analyzed transcriptome data and gene expression profile information from seedlings of Zea mays ssp. mexicana L. under cold and drought stresses. Together these data provides the most comprehensive sequence study available for Zea mays ssp. mexicana L. and provides some important functional genes and molecular mechanism information for improving the quality characteristic of maize in the future.