Figure 4.
Natural variation in ZmVAMP726 is associated with lignin monomer composition in maize sporopollenin.
(A) GWAS results for total lignin monomer content in thioacidolysis-released products of maize sporopollenin. The lead SNP is highlighted in red. The window (middle) represents the 60-kb genomic region surrounding the most significant SNP. The LD heatmap (bottom) shows pairwise R2 values between polymorphisms in the 60-kb region centered on the most significant SNP.
(B) Protein sequence alignment of AtVAMP726 and GRMZM2G075588. Identical residues are highlighted in gray, and similar residues are highlighted in yellow and cyan.
(C) Developmental expression pattern of ZmVAMP726. Relative expression was calculated using the 2−ΔΔCt method. Zm00001d015327 (UBQ) was used as the reference. Error bars represent SD (n = 3).
(D) Quantification of H, G, and S units and total lignin monomers in thioacidolysis-released products of sporopollenin from B73 and Zmvamp726. Student’s t-test was used for statistical analysis (n = 10, P < 0.05). Error bars represent SD. Asterisks indicate significant differences. n.s., not significant.