Abstract
Abiotic stresses, including cold and drought, negatively affect maize (Zea mays L.) seed field emergence and later yield and quality. In order to reveal the molecular mechanism of maize seed resistance to abiotic stress at seed germination, the global transcriptome of high- vigour variety Zhongdi175 exposed to cold- and drought- stress was analyzed by RNA-seq. In the comparison between the control and different stressed sample, 12,299 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected, of which 9605 and 7837 DEGs were identified under cold- and drought- stress, respectively. Functional annotation analysis suggested that stress response mediated by the pathways involving ribosome, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis and biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, among others. Of the obtained DEGs (12,299), 5,143 genes are common to cold- and drought- stress, at least 2248 TFs in 56 TF families were identified that are involved in cold and/or drought treatments during seed germination, including bHLH, NAC, MYB and WRKY families, which suggested that common mechanisms may be originated during maize seed germination in response to different abiotic stresses. This study will provide a better understanding of the molecular mechanism of response to abiotic stress during maize seed germination, and could be useful for cultivar improvement and breeding of high vigour maize cultivars.
Highlights
Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important grain-forage and energy crop, and an important genetic model plant
SlGRAS40 enhances tomato tolerance to abiotic stress by regulating auxin and gibberellin signal transduction[57]. These results indicated that Transcription factors (TFS) plays an important role in improving the ability of maize and other crops to resist abiotic stress during growth and development
5143 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were regulated by both stresses, indicating that there were many common and unique molecular mechanisms in the resistance of Zhongdi[175] seed germination to different abiotic stresses
Summary
Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important grain-forage and energy crop, and an important genetic model plant. The mechanism of abscisic acid synthesis, signal transduction and transport is the key to understand the ability of plants to resist abiotic s tresses[15,16] These plant responses to abiotic stresses at the molecular level are mainly regulated by genes regulating the synthesis of osmoprotectants and transporters as well as encoding regulatory proteins such as protein kinases, phosphatases and transcription factors (TFs)[2,17]. To fully understand the molecular response mechanism of maize seed germination (seedling establishment stage) under the cold and drought stresses, the transcriptome profiles of high-vigour cultivar Zhongdi[175] (Fig. 1) were obtained at the genome-wide level by using RNA-seq. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) under cold or/ and drought were identified These data will help to understand and explore the genetic and molecular mechanism of stress response in maize seed germination, and provide gene resources and strategies for maize variety improvement and breeding of high vigour varieties
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