Accepted_test

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) are a class of linear or circular RNA molecules of 200 nucleotides or more in length that do not encode proteins. Due to the many factors, the structural and functional characteristics of lncRNAs remain poorly understood. Also, studies show that lncRNA sequences undergo rapid evolution, the patterns of which have not yet been investigated. Thus, there is a need to analyze the gene composition in several members of a species at once. For this purpose, the concepts of pan-genome and pan-transcriptome have been proposed. However, to date, the works devoted to the study of pan-transcriptoms are mainly focused on the identification and study of new protein-coding genes. Whereas, there are not many works investigating lncRNAs on the scale of pan-transcriptoms, especially for plants.

This work aims to expand the knowledge of the maize pan-transcriptome by further analyzing lncRNAs. 503 libraries of maize inbred lines were used in this work. We obtained two maize pan-transcriptomes containing a coding (protein coding genes) part and a non-coding (lncRNA) part were obtained. For both pan-transcriptomes, annotation was done, orthologous groups were determined, and the conserved and variable parts were characterized. Also, a search for novel lncRNAs was performed separately for the pan-transcriptome with the non-coding part. For the pan-transcriptome with a coding part, GO terms and the expression of the new protein-coding genes were analyzed.