식물 대사공학에 의한 산업용 지방산 생산연구 현황

Abstract

Abstract Seed storage lipids of plants, essential for seed germination as energy supplier, have been used for humankind and animal as nutrition sources. Fatty acids of vegetable oils have the characters appropriate for industry based on their chain length, the position and the number of double bonds. So they are used as raw materials for lubricants, cosmetics, soaps, paints and plastics or as energy source such as bio-diesel. However, there is a limit that applies vegetable oils from typical oil crops for industrial uses, mainly because of the mixture of five common fatty acids. Therefore, identification of unusual fatty acids for industrial uses from diverse plant resources and metabolic engineering to produce unusual fatty acids have been carried out in Arabidopsis as a model for the study of oilseed biology. Here, we discuss the unusual fatty acids for industrial uses, the genes synthesizing them in lipid metabolism, and the current limits in production of transgenic plants accumulating unusual fatty acid in their seeds. In addition, we describe our work on metabolic engineering of Brassica napus for the production of the unusual fatty acid ricinoleic acid in the seed, because of its industrial uses.