High expression in maize pollen correlates with genetic contributions to pollen fitness as well as with coordinated transcription from neighboring transposable elements.

ABSTRACT: In flowering plants, gene expression in the haploid male gametophyte (pollen) is essential for sperm delivery and double fertilization. Pollen also undergoes dynamic epigenetic regulation of expression from transposable elements (TEs), but how this process interacts with gene expression is not clearly understood. To explore relationships among these processes, we quantified transcript levels in four male reproductive stages of maize (tassel primordia, microspores, mature pollen, and sperm cells) via RNA-seq. We found that, in contrast with vegetative cell-limited TE expression in Arabidopsis pollen, TE transcripts in maize accumulate as early as the microspore stage and are also present in sperm cells. Intriguingly, coordinate expression was observed between highly expressed protein-coding

SUBMITTER: Warman C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7112179 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature