De novo transcriptome assembly from the nodal root growth zone of hydrated and water-deficit stressed maize inbred line FR697.

Certain cultivars of maize show increased tolerance to water deficit conditions by maintenance of root growth. To better understand the molecular mechanisms related to this adaptation, nodal root growth zone samples were collected from the reference inbred line B73 and inbred line FR697, which exhibits a relatively greater ability to maintain root elongation under water deficits. Plants were grown under various water stress levels in both field and controlled environment settings. FR697-specific RNA-Seq datasets were generated and used for a de novo transcriptome assembly to characterize any genotype-specific genetic features. The assembly was aided by an Iso-Seq library of transcripts generated from various FR697 plant tissue samples. The Necklace pipeline was used to combine a Trinity de novo assembly along with a reference guided assembly and the Viridiplantae proteome to generate an annotated consensus "SuperTranscriptome" assembly of 47,915 transcripts with a N50 of 3152 bp in length. The results were compared by Blastn to maize reference genes, a Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) genome completeness report and compared with three maize reference genomes. The resultant 'SuperTranscriptome' was demonstrated to be of high-quality and will serve as an important reference for analysis of the maize nodal root transcriptomic response to environmental perturbations.