Heterosis
Heterosis describes the superior performance of heterozygous hybrids compared to their genetically diverse parental inbred lines. Heterosis is extensively exploited in agriculture for more than 100 years. Nevertheless, the underlying molecular basis remains largely enigmatic. Heterosis is not only manifested in adult plants in traits like plant height or yield but can already be observed during embryo and early seedling development. The classical dominance model of heterosis explains the superiority of hybrid plants by the complementation of deleterious parental alleles by superior alleles of the second parent. Genes active in one inbred line and the hybrid but inactive in another represent an extreme instance of allelic diversity defined as single parent expression. Thus far we were able to demonstrate that a large set of such genes consistently display expression complementation in a diverse set of maize hybrids in different tissues and along different developmental stages of primary roots. As a consequence of expression complementation, hundreds of genes are additionally active in hybrids. Future experiments will focus on the study of global gene expression profiles on tissue- and cell type-specific levels.
Collection of transcriptomic data generated within the research focus on heterosis in maize:
RNA-Seq data of the maize inbred lines B73 and Mo17 and their reciprocal hybrids generated…
… in primary roots: NCBI SRA accession SRA049019; Paschold et al. 2012 PubMed
… in primary roots in response to PEG treatment: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA284670; Marcon et al. 2017 PubMed
… in the meristematic zone, elongation zone, cortex and stele tissues of primary roots: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA218555; Paschold et al. 2014 PubMed, Baldauf et al. 2016 PubMed
RNA-Seq data of the maize inbred lines Oh43 and W64A and their reciprocal hybrids generated…
- … in primary roots: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA392500; Baldauf et al. 2018 PubMed, Baldauf et al. 2020 PubMed
RNA-Seq data of a diverse panel of maize inbred lines (B73, Mo17, A554, H84, H99, Oh43, W64A) and their hybrids generated…
… along primary root development: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA391230; Baldauf et al. 2018 PubMed, Baldauf et al. 2020 PubMed
… in field grown unpollinated ear, meiotic tassel and youngest fully developed leaf: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA705557; Baldauf et al. 2022 PubMed
