Viviparity is one of the major disasters threatening food security. To explore the molecular mechanism of regulating maize viviparity, F2 segregating population derived from the hybrid of maize viviparous vplike 4 with inbred lines Zheng58 and Mo17 was used as materials, the differentially expressed genes between wild type and corresponding mutants were compared by transcriptome sequencing (RNA SEQ) and bioinformatics, and the functions of the differentially expressed genes and related metabolic pathways were analyzed. The results showed that there were 3 376 differentially expressed genes (DEGS) in the mutant, of which 2 252 were upregulated and 1 124 were down regulated. GO (Gene ontology) functional enrichment analysis indicated that 2 151 DEGs were annotated and enriched in 716 GO taxonomic entries, which were mainly correlated to metabolism and stress response. Referring to KEGG database, the metabolic pathways of differential genes were analyzed. It was found that differential genes were significantly enriched in plant hormone signal transduction, starch and sucrose metabolism, photosynthesis and other pathways. The above results show that DEGs, GO taxonomic entries and metabolic pathways were closely related to viviparity of maize. These results will provide important data supports for investigating viviparous genes and related regulatory network comprehensively.