Article Protein Profiles Reveal Diverse Responsive Signaling Pathways in Kernels of Two Maize Inbred Lines with Contrasting Drought Sensitivity

Abstract: Drought stress is a major factor that contributes to disease susceptibility and yield loss in agricultural crops. To identify drought responsive proteins and explore metabolic pathways involved in maize tolerance to drought stress, two maize lines (B73 and Lo964) with contrasting drought sensitivity were examined. The treatments of drought and well water were applied at 14 days after pollination (DAP), and protein profiles were investigated in developing kernels (35 DAP) using iTRAQ (isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation). Proteomic analysis showed that 70 and 36 proteins were significantly altered OPEN ACCESS Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2014, 15 18893 in their expression under drought treatments in B73 and Lo964, respectively. The numbers and levels of differentially expressed proteins were generally higher in the sensitiv