Chunxiu Lang , Fulin Wang , Renhu Liu , Tao Zheng , Zhanghua Hu , Xuelong Wu , Guanting Wu

Institute of Virology and Biotechnology, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou, 310021, China
Author    Correspondence author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2022, Vol. 13, No. 3   doi: 10.5376/mpb.2022.13.0003
Received: 06 Jan., 2022    Accepted: 13 Jan., 2022    Published: 27 Jan., 2022

This article was first published in Molecular Plant Breeding in Chinese, and here was authorized to translate and publish the paper in English under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Lang C.X., Wang F.L., Liu R.H., Zheng T., Hu Z.H., Wu X.L., and Wu G.T., 2022, Genetic regulation of fatty acid biosynthesis in Brassica napus seeds based on FAE1 and FAD2 genes, Molecular Plant Breeding, 13(3): 1-9 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2022.13.0003)

Fatty acid elongase 1 (FAE1) and delta-12 fatty acid desaturase 2 (FAD2) are two key enzymes in plant fatty acid biosynthesis pathway. Five different types of transgenic lines with identical genetic background were developed by single and double-expression regulation of the genes coding for these two key enzymes in the same Brassica napus variety CY2. Seeds of the five types of transgenic lines and the wild-type control, which were planted under the same environmental conditions, were analyzed and compared for fatty acid composition and oil content in the present study. The results showed that the contents of multiple fatty acids, such as oleic, linoleic, linolenic, eicosenoic and erucic acid, could be significantly altered by single and double regulation of the two genes. Particularly in the seeds in which the two endogenous target genes were simultaneously silenced, the oleic acid content was increased to 82.8% from 20.5% of CY2, and in the seeds with grain-specific expression of Arabidopsis thaliana FAE1 gene, the erucic acid content was raised to 60.2% from 43.9% of CY2. Compared with the wild-type control, the relative ratios of eighteen-carbon unsaturated fatty acids and the oleic desaturation proportion were all markedly changed in the five types of transgenic seeds. In addition, it was found that the seed oil content was improved by enhanced expression of FAE1 and decreased by silencing of FAE1 and FAD2, suggesting that the synthesis and accumulation of seed oil would be influenced to a certain extent by genetic manipulation of the two key enzyme genes.

FAE1 gene; FAD2 gene; Fatty acid biosynthesis; Genetic regulation; Rapeseed (Brassica napus)