  We study oxygen abundance profiles of the gaseous disc components in
simulated galaxies in a hierarchical universe. We analyse the disc metallicity
gradients in relation to the stellar masses and star formation rates of the
simulated galaxies. We find a trend for galaxies with low stellar masses to
have steeper metallicity gradients than galaxies with high stellar masses at z
~0. We also detect that the gas-phase metallicity slopes and the specific star
formation rate (sSFR) of our simulated disc galaxies are consistent with
recently reported observations at z ~0. Simulated galaxies with high stellar
masses reproduce the observed relationship at all analysed redshifts and have
an increasing contribution of discs with positive metallicity slopes with
increasing redshift. Simulated galaxies with low stellar masses a have larger
fraction of negative metallicity gradients with increasing redshift. Simulated
galaxies with positive or very negative metallicity slopes exhibit disturbed
morphologies and/or have a close neighbour. We analyse the evolution of the
slope of the oxygen profile and sSFR for a gas-rich galaxy-galaxy encounter,
finding that this kind of events could generate either positive and negative
gas-phase oxygen profiles depending on their state of evolution. Our results
support claims that the determination of reliable metallicity gradients as a
function of redshift is a key piece of information to understand galaxy
formation and set constrains on the subgrid physics.
