Fig. 4

Co-expression analysis and expression analysis of TF5, TF6, TF8. A Hierarchical heatmap illustrating the co-expression patterns between 8 ZmWAKL genes and their respective differentially expressed TFs. Red indicates higher correlation coefficients, while blue represents lower correlation coefficients. TF1, TF7 and TF16 show high correlation coefficients with two ZmWAKLs, respectively. B Expression analysis of the 3 identified TFs following GA treatment. The data is presented as the mean ± standard error (SE) of five replicates. Statistical analysis was performed using a two-tailed paired t-test to determine the significance of the difference between GA-treated and control samples (*P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001)