Fig. 1

A co-expression network constructed in maize. a The distribution of uniquely-mapped reads in each tissue/stage. Detailed information on each tissue and developmental stage is available in Table 1. b A gene co-expression network for maize, including 189 modules with 31,811 genes. The co-expression network can be explored at the online database [46]. The blue module in the co-expression network shows a shoot apical meristerm specific sub-network. c A shoot apical meristem (SAM) module involving well-known SAM-expressed genes. Each node represents one gene, while each edge (line) linking two nodes indicates a significant co-expression correlation. Kn1, Rs1 and Lg3 represent the Knotted1, Rough Sheath1 and Liguleless3 genes, respectively. The size of gene labels is in accordance with the node size, which is further determined by the number of co-expressed genes. d The tissue-specific expression pattern of the SAM-specific module shown in C. Each row of the heatmap (left panel) indicates one tissue/stage and each column represents one gene. Each line of the plot (right panel) represents one gene; the red line shows the average scaled expression level across all tissues/stages