So excited to put this out into the world! Many thanks to coauthors Jeremy Pardo and @bobvanburen.bsky.social who helped make this paper what it is today. Please give it a read if you're interested, and feel free to contact me with questions!

By combining set operations and random forest classification methods, I found 744 core genes across six stressors in a set of almost 1,900 public maize RNA-seq samples. I also found that this set was enriched in regulatory genes, especially stress-responsive transcription factors.

After years of reading about abiotic stress, I started noticing similar physiological responses to drought, salt, cold, etc., which made me wonder: was there a core set of genes that was responsive as well?

Spoiler alert: yes, there is!

Thanks Aidan - that's what I am leaning towards right now as well.