Zea mays Transcriptome or Gene expression. Zea mays

Maize, Zea mays, is one of the most widely grown crops in the world as it provides cereal grain for human purposes and feedstock for cattle. Maize is increasingly used as a biomass fuel, such as ethanol. Studies have shown that maize stem is made up of different lignified cell types: epidermis, sclerenchyma (a few layers under the epidermis and surrounding vascular bundles in the rind), parenchyma (mostly lignified near the epidermis). One of the aims of this work is to find out if it is the proportion of these different cell types or their number (especially for vascular bundles) which influences the degree of digestibility of maize lines. For that the objective of our work is to develop a genomic strategic approach allowing an improvement of traits involved in cell wall degradability. The work will include the mapping of genes considered as strategic in the cell wall biosynthesis, the search of new genes of interest through bio-analysis, the functional analysis of genes suspected to be of importance in cell wall pathway, the search of candidate underlying QTL, and transcriptomic approaches in order to find genes co-regulation, transcription, and eQTL.-Comparison of 2 maize lines : Cm484: good digestibility F98902: bad digestibility at the following development stage : 21 days after sowing -7 leaves- Keywords: genotype comparaison Overall design: 4 arrays - maize

玉米（Zea mays）是全球种植范围最广的作物之一，既可为人类提供食用谷物，也可作为家畜的饲料原料。如今玉米愈发多地被用作生物质燃料，例如乙醇。研究表明，玉米茎秆由多种木质化细胞类型构成：表皮组织、厚壁组织（位于表皮下方数层，包裹茎皮中的维管束）以及薄壁组织（在表皮附近多呈木质化状态）。本研究的核心目标之一，便是探明不同细胞类型的占比或是其数量（尤其是维管束），是否会影响不同玉米品系的消化率。为此，本研究旨在开发一套基因组学策略方法，以改良与细胞壁降解特性相关的农艺性状。研究内容将涵盖：定位细胞壁生物合成通路中的关键功能基因、通过生物信息学分析筛选潜在的目标新基因、对参与细胞壁代谢通路的候选基因开展功能验证、挖掘调控相关性状的数量性状位点（Quantitative Trait Locus, QTL），以及采用转录组学方法探寻共调控基因、转录因子及表达数量性状位点（expression Quantitative Trait Locus, eQTL）。本研究对比了2个玉米品系：Cm484（消化率优良）与F98902（消化率较差），采样时的作物发育阶段为播种后21天（7叶期）。关键词：基因型比较；整体实验设计：4组玉米基因芯片