Open AccessBottlenecks in erucic acid accumulation in genetically engineered ultrahigh erucic acid C rambe abyssinica
Author(s) -
Guan Rui,
Lager Ida,
Li Xueyuan,
Stymne Sten,
Zhu LiHua
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
plant biotechnology journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.525
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1467-7652
pISSN - 1467-7644
DOI - 10.1111/pbi.12128
Subject(s) - erucic acid , biology , genetically engineered , microbiology and biotechnology , botany , genetics , rapeseed , gene
Summary Erucic acid is a valuable industrial fatty acid with many applications. The main producers of this acid are today high erucic rapeseed ( B rassica napus ) and mustard ( B rassica juncea ), which have 45%–50% of erucic acid in their seed oils. C rambe abyssinica is an alternative promising producer of this acid as it has 55%–60% of erucic acid in its oil. Through genetic modification ( GM ) of three genes, we have previously increased the level of erucic acid to 71% (68 mol%) in C rambe seed oil. In this study, we further investigated different aspects of oil biosynthesis in the developing GM C rambe seeds in comparison with wild‐type (Wt) C rambe, rapeseed and safflower ( C arthamus tinctorius ). We show that C rambe seeds have very low phosphatidylcholine‐diacylglycerol interconversion, suggesting it to be the main reason why erucic acid is limited in the membrane lipids during oil biosynthesis. We further show that GM C rambe seeds have slower seed development than Wt, accompanied by slower oil accumulation during the first 20 days after flowering ( DAF ). Despite low accumulation of erucic acid during early stages of GM seed development, nearly 86 mol% of all fatty acids accumulated between 27 and 50 DAF was erucic acid, when 40% of the total oil is laid down. Likely bottlenecks in the accumulation of erucic acid during early stages of GM C rambe seed development are discussed.