Supplemental Material for He et al., 2020

Time-course gene expression data of maize seedlings under drought were used to identify drought responsive genes, their time-series expression patterns, and which drought stages, namely, early, middle, and late, responses occurred. As compared with later responsive genes, a higher proportion of genes with copy number variation were found in early and middle responsive genes, and their sequence variation is more associated with levels of drought tolerance. With small RNA time-course expression data from the same samples, interactions between genes and small RNAs were investigated to understand transcriptomic regulation upon progressive drought stress.

干旱条件下玉米幼苗的时间序列基因表达数据被用于鉴定干旱响应基因、其时间序列表达模式以及响应发生在哪些干旱阶段（即早期、中期和晚期）。与晚期响应基因相比，早期和中期响应基因中具有拷贝数变异（copy number variation）的基因比例更高，且其序列变异与耐旱性水平的关联性更强。结合相同样本的小RNA（small RNA）时间序列表达数据，研究人员探究了基因与小RNA之间的相互作用，以解析渐进式干旱胁迫下的转录组调控机制。