New Twist in Engineering Plant Oils

Researchers at the United States Department of Energy Brookhaven National Laboratory have taken advantage of genetic manipulation to modify the activity of a plant enzyme. The process will help convert an unsaturated oil in the seeds of a temperate plant to the more saturated kind usually found in tropical plants. The engineered oils could be used to produce feedstocks for industrial processes in place of those currently obtained from petrochemicals.

The researchers focused on an enzyme known as KASII that normally elongates fatty acid chains by adding two carbon atoms. The longer 18-carbon chains are more likely to be acted on by enzymes that desaturate the fat. To decrease the likelihood of desaturation and increase the level of saturated fats in the plant seeds, the Brookhaven team prevented the chain lengthening by reducing the levels of KASII with the use of RNA-interference (RNAi). The genetic manipulations that reduced KASII activity resulted in a seven-fold increase in 16-carbon unsaturated fatty acids in temperate Arabidopsis plant seed oils.

The news article is available at http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=07-24. The original paper can be accessed at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0611141104v1.