Oil-Rich GM Tobacco Plants for Biofuel Production

Researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at the Thomas Jefferson University have identified a way to increase the oil content of tobacco leaves- by overexpressing the Arabidopsis thaliana genes diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT) and the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2). DGAT encodes an enzyme that plays a key role in triacylglycerol biosynthesis. LEC2, on the other hand, regulates seed maturation and seed oil storage.

The modifications led to up to a 20-fold increase in triacylglyceride accumulation in tobacco leaves. Specifically, the DGAT gene modification led to about 5.8 percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves, which is about two-fold the amount of oil produced normally. The LEC2 gene modification led to 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight.

"Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising 'energy plant' platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production," said Vyacheslav Andrianov one of the authors of the paper published by the Plant Biotechnology Journal. "By generating both biofuel oil and ethanol, tobacco has the potential to produce more energy per hectare than any other non-food crop," the authors wrote in the paper.

The paper is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7652.2009.00458.x