AsianScientist (Nov. 19, 2015) – Researchers in Japan have succeeded in inducing the genes involved in oil synthesis in seeds to work for longer periods of time. Their findings, reported in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, enables seeds to accumulate more oil and might help meet the rising demand for seed oil.
Plant-derived oils are already widely used all over the world both for food and for industrial purposes. They are also increasingly attractive as potential raw materials for environmentally-friendly bio-fuels and bio-plastics.
Many plants store oil and protein in their seeds as energy sources needed for germination. A team of researchers from the National Institute for Basic Biology led by Dr. Masatake Kanai has now found that oils are actively synthesized only during the mid-phase of the seed formation process.
The research group reasoned that by extending the period seeds synthesize oils, they should be able to increase their oil content in seeds. Therefore, using the model plant Arabidopsis, they extended the expression time of WRI1, a gene that activates oil synthesis.
As a result, they were able to increase the oil content of the seeds to 140 percent as compared to wild-type. Also, while extending the oil synthesis phase, suppressing protein synthesis in the late-phase of seed formation increased the oil content of the seeds as compared to wild-type to 170 percent.
This study makes it clear that the length of the oil synthesis phase in seed formation is one of the primary factors that determine final oil content. Moreover, by suppressing protein synthesis while extending the oil synthesis period they succeeded in a further large increase in oil production.
“By applying the current results to crop breeding, prolonging the period of oil synthesis will generate many new crops with high oil content,” said Kanai.
The article can be found at: Kanai et al. (2015) Extension of Oil Biosynthesis During the Mid-phase of Seed Development Enhances Oil Content in Arabidopsis Seeds.
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Source: National Institutes of Natural Sciences.
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