Leafy biofactories: producing industrial oils in non‐seed biomass

Abstract

Consumers are a funny lot. We demand products with new and improved properties combined with lower price and sustainability. Most consumers remain unaware of the origin of the molecules that they use in everyday products and are often surprised to learn that many household items are derived from fossil fuels. Even more surprising is the realisation that plastics and lubricants are the high‐value products in fossil fuels, and the remaining “waste stream” is sold for combustion. Although transportation could be powered by alternative means in the future, it remains an open question as to how high‐value plastics and lubricants may be sourced at reasonable cost in a sustainable manner. Here, I argue that recent advances in the metabolic engineering of plant biomass are starting to address these questions. Biology produces a fascinating array of lipid structures that would provide either direct replacements for petrochemicals or the basis for new materials. With next‐generation sequencing providing a deluge of gene candidates, a major bottleneck in plant metabolic engineering has been an effective high throughput screening protocol to discriminate between gene candidates. This task might …