Abstract
Plant growth regulators (PGRs) are commonly used in cereal cropping systems to restrict plant height and control lodging. Ethephon has been reported to shorten internodes and increase grain yield of maize. To analyze the transcriptomic profiles of maize internode elongation following ethephon treatment, differentially expressed genes were compared between the treatment and control samples of inbred line Zong 31 using the Affymetrix Maize Genome Array. According to the microarray data, 326 probe sets showed significant change in expression. Further research revealed that the most remarkable effects of ethephon on maize internodes elongation occurred during a 48 h period, when 89 differentially expressed genes were detected. There were dramatic change in transcript levels at 24 h and six Auxin transport genes and four gibberellin biosynthesis pathway genes were differ- entially expressed in Zong 31 in response to ethephon treatment. In summary, we showed that gaseous ethylene release is involved in internode meristem cell elongation through the regulation of plant hormone signaling in maize. This work provides a platform for studies in which candidate genes will be functionally tested for involve- ment in internode elongation.
Highlights
Lodging is one of the major problems in maize production worldwide, impacting greatly on field management, grain quality, and mechanized harvesting and accounts for annual yield losses of 5%–25%[1,2]
Our study found that Zm.16475.1.S1_at was downregulated 0.33-fold in quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which agreed with the statistical analysis of microarray data, suggesting that cell cycle checkpoint protein MAD2 might potentially function in maize internode elongation in responses to ethephon treatment[59,60,61,62]
The microarray data showed that more genes are involved in internode elongation 24 h after ethephon treatment, and many genes in plant hormone signaling pathways were markedly upregulated or downregulated
Summary
Lodging (root and stalk lodging) is one of the major problems in maize production worldwide, impacting greatly on field management, grain quality, and mechanized harvesting and accounts for annual yield losses of 5%–25%[1,2]. Plant growth regulators are involved in various aspects of chemical control to promote, retard or inhibit growth, and are commonly applied in agriculture to control lodging in cereal crops[4] These exogenously applied chemical compounds reduce elongation and lead to dwarfing by promoting biosynthesis of ethylen or inhibiting production of gibberellins (GA). One hundred and thirty-six probe sets were downregulated according to GO categories and enrichment analysis, which contained 13162 annotated reference items on the whole genome chip These were classified into 10 functional categories, including only biological process and cellular component, and a total of 95 probe sets with GO term annotations were identified (Table 3). 10 probe sets GO terms included chloroplast (GO:0009507, 0.045); their functions in plants include hydrolase activity, unfolded protein binding, embryonic development, chloroplast organization, DNA topological change and response to chlorate
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