Comparative analysis of the male inflorescence transcriptome profiles of an ms22 mutant of maize

PLoS One. 2018 Jul 13;13(7):e0199437. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199437. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

In modern agricultural production, maize is the most successful crop utilizing heterosis. 712C-ms22 is an important male sterile material in maize. In this study, we performed transcriptome sequencing analysis of the V10 stage of male inflorescence. Through this analysis, 27.63 million raw reads were obtained, and trimming of the raw data revealed 26.63 million clean reads, with an average match rate of 94.64%. Using Tophat software, we matched these clean reads to the maize reference genome. The abundance of 39,622 genes was measured, and 35,399 genes remained after filtering out the non-expressed genes across all the samples. These genes were classified into 19 categories by clusters of orthologous groups of protein annotation. Transcriptome sequencing analysis of the male sterile and fertile 712C-ms22 maize revealed some key DEGs that may be related to metabolic pathways. qRT-PCR analysis validated the gene expression patterns identified by RNA-seq. This analysis revealed some of the essential genes responsible for pollen development and for pollen tube elongation. Our findings provide useful markers of male sterility and new insights into the global mechanisms mediating male sterility in maize.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Gene Expression Profiling*
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Plant*
  • Gene Ontology
  • Genome, Plant
  • Genome-Wide Association Study
  • Genomics
  • Inflorescence / genetics*
  • Phenotype
  • Plant Infertility / genetics
  • Transcriptome*
  • Zea mays / genetics*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31571580).