Abiotic stress response

Abiotic stresses like drought, heat, cold and salt stress are major factors limiting plant production worldwide. With the progress of climate change, the severity and variation of these stresses will increase. The development of tolerant cultivars is complicated by the variability and complex genetic architecture of traits related to abiotic stress.

Currently, we are working to decode the genetic and genomic basis of cold tolerance in maize (BMBF project MAZE). We focus on early root formation, as plants are highly sensitive to these stresses during this phase of development.

Publications from our group on abiotic stress response of seedling roots:

RNA-Seq of maize in response to water deficit

… in primary roots of the inbred line B73: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA226757¹; Opitz et al. 2014 PubMed²
… in primary roots of the inbred lines B73 and Mo17 and their reciprocal hybrids: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA284670³; Marcon et al. 2017 PubMed⁴
… in the meristematic zone, elongation zone, cortex and stele tissues of primary roots of inbred line B73: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA271928⁵; Opitz et al. 2016 PubMed⁶

RNA-Seq of maize in response to cold stress

... in the elongation and meristem zones of primary roots: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA556806⁷; Frey et al. 2020 PubMed⁸

RNA-Seq of maize in response to local high nitrate stimulation

… in stele tissues of shoot-borne roots: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA283053⁹; Yu et al. 2015 PubMed¹⁰
… in phloem pole pericycle cells of primary, seminal, crown and brace roots: NCBI Bioproject accession PRJNA294044¹¹; Yu et al. 2016 PubMed¹²