Zea mays Transcriptome or Gene expression. Zea mays

Agilent oligonucleotide arrays were used to profile gene expression in dissected maize anthers of 3 types of male-sterile plants and their fertile siblings at four stages of development: after anther initiation, at the rapid mitotic proliferation stage, pre-meiosis, and meiotic prophase I. The male-sterile mutants (ms23, msca, and mac1) lack a range of normal cell types resulting from a temporal progression of anther failure. By combining the data sets from the comparisons between individual sterile and fertile anthers, candidate genes predicted to play important roles during maize anther development were assigned to stages and to likely cell types. Keywords: anther development, maize, male sterility Overall design: 3 biological replicates of 3 different male-sterile mutants and their fertile siblings at 4 stages of anther development (36 arrays). Comparisons were done between male-sterile and fertile sibs at the same development stage.