Project description:Gene transcription is an essential step of gene function and transcriptome variation is of agronomical, ecological and evolutionary importance. To explore global expression patterns and dissect the underlying genetic mechanisms are important scientific inquires which are still largely unknown, especially between a segregating population and the parents. In our study, we used RNA-Seq to profile the shoot apex transcriptome variation (including protein coding genes and non-coding genes) in maize IBM RIL population, to map eQTLs underlying the transcriptome variations and to utilize eQTLs to clone genes involved in maize shoot apices development. We revealed that: Much of the variation (the population mean, the coefficient of variation) of gene expression levels in RILs is reflective of differences present among the parents; These transcriptome variations could be explained by 30,774 eQTLs with 96 trans-eQTL hotspots; In many cases, the genes commonly regulated by a trans-eQTL hotspot are enriched for a specific function or act in the same genetic pathway; Structural variation within and near genes contributs to cis-regulatory variation. All of these results indicate Mendelian factors play as major contributors to the transcriptome variation. Meanwhile, non-Mendelian regulations were also observed as paramutation-like expression pattern for 145 genes, of which 88% genes were predicted to be potential targets of miRNAs or ta-siRNAs, and as unexpected presence/absence expression patterns for 210 genes. These genes with unexpected presence/absence expression patterns in the RILs likely include examples of functional genes as well as transposed gene fragments that may contribute to regulatory variation of their ancestral syntenic genes.
Project description:Drought represents a major constraint on maize production worldwide. Understanding the genetic basis for natural variation in drought tolerance of maize may facilitate efforts to improve this trait in cultivated germplasm. Here, using a genome-wide association study, we show that a miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE) inserted in the promoter of a NAC gene (ZmNAC111) is significantly associated with natural variation in maize drought tolerance. For maize RNA-seq analysis, pooled tissues from three, eight-day-old maize seedlings were collected from transgenic and wild-type plants, prior to or after 2-hour dehydration, to conduct the RNA-seq analysis.
Project description:Analysis of the maize alternative splicing landscape, including transcript discovery and mapping of genotype-dependent variations in alternative splicing using B73, Mo17 and the SX19 inbred mapping population
Project description:Analysis of the maize alternative splicing landscape, including transcript discovery and mapping of genotype-dependent variations in alternative splicing using B73, Mo17 and the SX19 inbred mapping population Total RNA was isolated from 5 week old leaves of hydroponically grown maize plants and used to construct RNA seq libraries
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:Maize is one of the most important crops in the world. With the exponentially increasing population and the need for ever increased food and feed production, an increased yield of maize grain (as well as rice, wheat and other grains) will be critical. Maize grain development is understood from the perspective of morphology, hormone responses, and storage reserve accumulation. This includes various studies on gene expression during embryo development and maturation but a global study of gene expression of the embryo has not been possible until recently. Transcriptome analysis is a powerful new tool that can be used to understand the genetic basis of embryo maturation. We undertook a transcriptomic analysis of normal maturing embryos at 15, 21 and 27 days after pollination (DAP), of one elite maize germplasm line that was utilized in crosses to transgenic plants. More than 19,000 genes were analyzed by this method and the challenge was to select subsets of genes that are vitally important to embryo development and maturation for the initial analysis. We describe the changes in expression for genes relating to primary metabolic pathways, DNA synthesis, late embryogenesis proteins and embryo storage proteins, shown through transcriptome analysis and confirmed levels of transcription for some genes in the transcriptome using qRT-PCR.
Project description:These data include RNA-seq, circRNA-seq, and small RNA-seq of transcriptome, Ribo-seq of translatome and protein protein binary interactions by recombination-based library vs. library yeast-2-hybrid throughout the lifecycle of the maize inbred line B73.
Project description:Through hierarchical clustering of transcript abundance data across a diverse set of tissues and developmental stages in maize, we have identified a number of coexpression modules which describe the transcriptional circuits of maize development.
Project description:Maize is one of the most important crops in the world and serves as an excellent model for seed development research. Despite the important role of the transcriptome in development, genome-wide expression throughout the process of maize seed development has not been characterized. Using RNA-seq, we developed a spatio-temporal transcriptome atlas of B73 maize seed development from fertilization to maturity for embryo, endosperm, and whole seed tissue.