assessment of corn transcriptome in two susceptible and tolerant genotypes to fusarium veticillioides at grain filling under non-inoculated conditions

Objective: fusarium is one of the most important causes of corn rot. fusarium corn infection generally exists in corn seeds and causes a decrease in plant vigor, and leading to loss of seedlings. given the significance of corn and the necessity to investigate the genes related to resistance against this pathogen, it is essential to acquire more comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic information. this study aimed to investigate the transcriptomic change of the two corn genotypes 15 days after flowering.methods: in this study, transcriptome analysis of two c7 and mo17 corn lines was conducted using rna-seq technology and the illumina hiseq 2500 sequencing system. the c7 and mo17 lines have shown the highest differences in resistance and susceptibility to fusarium rot, respectively. after sequencing and deletion of the low-quality reads, 1078 significant differential expressions were observed.results: the analysis of gene ontology revealed that in the grouping of differential genes based on molecular function, the catalytic activity and binding groups accounted for the highest number of genes in both genotypes. also, in classifying genes based on the biological process, the two groups of metabolic process and cellular process had the highest percentage of differential genes in both genotypes. in the kegg pathway analysis, the most significant pathways belonged to the metabolic pathway, protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum, and biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. the kegg analysis of biological pathways in genotype c7 showed that a total of 144 differential expressions were assigned to 68 pathways. hb, myb, and bzip transcription factor families were among the important transcription factors that showed differential expression in this analysis.conclusion: the seed development stage is controlled by transcription factors. zmereb167, as an endosperm-specific transcription factor, affects starch accumulation and grain size.