Ozone sensitivity of diverse maize genotypes is associated with differences in gene regulation, not gene content

Abstract The maize pangenome has demonstrate large amounts of presence/absence variation and it has been hypothesized that presence/absence variation contributes to stress response. To uncover whether the observed genetic variation in physiological response to elevated ozone (a secondary air pollutant that causes significant crop yield losses) concentration is due to variation in genic content, and/or variation in gene expression, we examine the impact of sustained elevated ozone concentration on the leaf tissue from 5 diverse maize inbred genotypes (B73, Mo17, Hp301, C123, NC338). Analysis of long reads from the transcriptomes of the 10 conditions found expressed genes in the leaf are part of the shared genome, with 94.5% of expressed genes from syntenic loci. Quantitative analysis of short reads from 120 plants (twelve from each condition) found limited transcriptional response to sustained ozone stress in the ozone resistant B73 genotype (151 genes), while more than 3,300 genes were significantly differentially expressed in the more sensitive NC338 genotype. The genes underpinning the divergence of B73 from the other 4 genotypes implicates ethylene signaling consistent with some findings in Arabidopsis. For the 82 of the 83 genes differentially expressed among all 5 genotypes and the 788 of 789 genes differentially expressed in 4 genotypes (excluding B73) in sensitivity to ozone is associated with oxidative stress tolerance being associated with a weaker response to a reactive oxygen species (ROS) signal and suggests that genetic variation in downstream processes is key to ozone tolerance.