The quantitative proteomic analysis provides insight into the effects of drought stress in maize

Drought stress is one of the major environmental factors that limit maize yield in agriculture. However, few studies have analyzed how proteins respond to different degrees of drought at the proteome level. In this study, physiological characteristics and comparative tandem mass tag proteomics were used to analyze the responses of maize seedlings to mild and severe drought stresses in pot experiments. A total of 104 and 464 proteins were differentially expressed under mild and severe drought, respectively, but only 30 proteins were overlapped. Further Gene Ontology enrichment analysis showed maize can adapt to mild drought by activating antioxidant system and photorespiration. Under severe drought stress, photosystem and protein synthesis-related proteins were downregulated indicating severe drought damaged the photosynthetic apparatus. The plant biomass under drought stress was also reduced sharply compared to control. Taken together, our study provides insights into proteomic information of maize leaves under increasing drought stress.