Zea mays Transcriptome or Gene expression. Zea mays

Background: Plant diurnal rhythms are vital environmental adaptations to coordinate internal physiological responses to alternating day-night cycles. A comprehensive view of diurnal biology has been lacking for maize (Zea mays), a major world crop. Methodology: A photosynthetic tissue, the leaf, and a non-photosynthetic tissue, the developing ear, were sampled under natural field conditions. Genome-wide transcript profiling was conducted on a high-density 105K Agilent microarray to investigate diurnal rhythms. Overall design: The top-most fully expanded leaf from each plant collected. Plants were sampled every 4 hours over 3 days. Our sampling times were: 6 am (dawn), 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, 10 pm and 2 am. Tissues were collected from three field reps and within each field rep we collected samples from three individual plants

研究背景：植物昼夜节律是重要的环境适应性机制，可协调内部生理响应以适配昼夜交替的光周期循环。作为全球主粮作物之一的玉米（Zea mays），此前仍缺乏对其昼夜节律生物学的全面认知。
研究方法：本研究在自然田间条件下，分别采集光合组织叶片与非光合组织发育中的玉米果穗。为探究玉米的昼夜节律特征，采用高密度105K安捷伦（Agilent）基因芯片开展全基因组转录谱分析（genome-wide transcript profiling）。
实验设计：每株植株采集最顶部完全展开的叶片。采样周期为3天，每4小时采集一次，具体采样时间点为：清晨6时（黎明）、上午10时、下午2时、下午6时、晚上10时与凌晨2时。所有组织样本均来自3个田间生物学重复，且每个田间重复内采集3株独立植株的组织样本。