title: Engineering oilseeds for sustainable production of industrial and nutritional feedstocks: solving bottlenecks in fatty acid flux.
abstract: Oilseeds provide a unique platform for the production of high-value fatty acids that can replace non-sustainable petroleum and oceanic sources of specialty chemicals and aquaculture feed. However, recent efforts to engineer the seeds of crop and model plant species to produce new types of fatty acids, including hydroxy and conjugated fatty acids for industrial uses and long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids for farmed fish feed, have met with only modest success. The collective results from these studies point to metabolic 'bottlenecks' in the engineered plant seeds that substantially limit the efficient or selective flux of unusual fatty acids between different substrate pools and ultimately into storage triacylglycerol. Evidence is emerging that diacylglycerol acyltransferase 2, which catalyzes the final step in triacylglycerol assembly, is an important contributor to the synthesis of unusual fatty acid-containing oils, and is likely to be a key target for future oilseed metabolic engineering efforts.
authors: US Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service Plant Genetics Research Unit, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, 975 North Warson Road, Saint Louis, Missouri 63132, USA. ecahoon@danforthcenter.org
authors: Edgar B
authors: EB
authors: Cahoon
authors: Jay M
authors: JM
authors: Shockey
authors: Charles R
authors: CR
authors: Dietrich
authors: Satinder K
authors: SK
authors: Gidda
authors: Robert T
authors: RT
authors: Mullen
authors: John M
authors: JM
authors: Dyer
mesh_terms: D017756:Aquaculture; D053898:Biosynthetic Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000378:metabolism*; D051048:Diacylglycerol O-Acyltransferase / Q000378:metabolism; D005227:Fatty Acids / Q000378:metabolism; D015525:Fatty Acids, Omega-3 / Q000378:metabolism*; D007219:Industrial Oils / Q000600:supply & distribution; D010938:Plant Oils / Q000378:metabolism*; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000378:metabolism*; D012639:Seeds / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D005227:Fatty Acids; D015525:Fatty Acids, Omega-3; D010938:Plant Oils; D051048:Diacylglycerol O-Acyltransferase