Zygotic Genome Activation Occurs Shortly After Fertilization in Maize

Plant material from sperm and egg cells, zygotes 12 and 24 hours after pollination (hap) and apical and basal cells was collected using manual dissection. From these cell types RNA Seq libraries were prepared and gene expression profiles were analysed Three replicate samples of the cell types: sperm (each 1000 cells) , egg (each 20 cells), zygote 12hap(14,15,15 cells), zygote 24 hap (16,16,17 cells), apical (each 16 cells) and basal (13,13,14 cells) were collected. Junyi Chen and Nicholas Strieder contributed equally to this work.