A Phylogenetically Based Comparative Transcriptional Landscape of Maize and Sorghum Obtained by Single-molecule Sequencing

Maize and sorghum are both important crops with similar overall plant architectures, but they have key differences, especially in regard to their inflorescences. To better understand these two organisms at the molecular level, we compared the expression profiles of both protein-coding and non-coding transcripts in 11 matched tissues using single-molecule long-read and deep RNA sequencing. In this study, maize B73 line was planted at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory upland farm, 11 tissues together with previously reported six tissues were collected, RNA was extracted, library was made and sequenced on the HiSeq 2500 PE125 platform at Woodbury Genome Center.