PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Mélisande Blein-Nicolas
AU  - Sandra Sylvia Negro
AU  - Thierry Balliau
AU  - Claude Welcker
AU  - Llorenç Cabrera Bosquet
AU  - Stéphane Dimitri Nicolas
AU  - Alain Charcosset
AU  - Michel Zivy
TI  - A systems genetics approach reveals environment-dependent associations between SNPs, protein co-expression and drought-related traits in maize
AID  - 10.1101/636514
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 636514
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/11/636514.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/11/636514.full
AB  - The effect of drought on maize yield is of particular concern in the context of climate change and human population growth. However, the complexity of drought-response mechanisms make the design of new drought-tolerant varieties a difficult task that would greatly benefit from a better understanding of the genotype-phenotype relationship. To provide novel insight into this relationship, we applied a systems genetics approach integrating high-throughput phenotypic, proteomic and genomic data acquired from 254 maize hybrids grown under two watering conditions. Using association genetics and protein co-expression analysis, we detected more than 22,000 pQTLs across the two conditions and confidently identified fifteen loci with potential pleiotropic effects on the proteome. We showed that even mild water deficit induced a profound remodeling of the proteome, which affected the structure of the protein co-expression network, and a reprogramming of the genetic control of the abundance of many proteins, notably those involved in stress response. Co-localizations between pQTLs and QTLs for ecophysiological traits, found mostly in the water deficit condition, indicated that this reprogramming may also affect the phenotypic level. Finally, we identified several candidate genes that are potentially responsible for both the co-expression of stress response proteins and the variations of ecophysiological traits under water deficit. Taken together, our findings provide novel insights into the molecular mechanisms of drought tolerance and suggest some pathways for further research and breeding.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.