Tissue-specific gene expression and protein abundance patterns are associated with fractionation bias in maize.

Our study shows that the larger subgenome has a greater range of functional assignments and that there is a relative lack of overlap between the subgenomes in terms of gene functions than would be suggested by similar patterns of gene expression and protein abundance. Our study also revealed that some reactions are catalyzed uniquely by the larger and smaller subgenomes. The tissue-specific, nonequivalent expression-level dominance pattern observed here implies a change in regulatory control which favors differentiated selective pressure on the retained duplicates leading to eventual change in gene functions.