Abstract
Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz is an important Brassicaceae oil crop with a number of excellent agronomic traits including low water and fertilizer input, strong adaptation and resistance. Furthermore, its short life cycle and easy genetic transformation, combined with available data of genome and other “-omics” have enabled camelina as a model oil plant to study lipid metabolism regulation and genetic improvement. Particularly, camelina is capable of rapid metabolic engineering to synthesize and accumulate high levels of unusual fatty acids and modified oils in seeds, which are more stable and environmentally friendly. Such engineered camelina oils have been increasingly used as the super resource for edible oil, health-promoting food and medicine, biofuel oil and high-valued chemical production. In this review, we mainly highlight the latest advance in metabolic engineering towards the predictive manipulation of metabolism for commercial production of desirable bio-based products using camelina as an ideal platform. Moreover, we deeply analysis camelina seed metabolic engineering strategy and its promising achievements by describing the metabolic assembly of biosynthesis pathways for acetyl glycerides, hydroxylated fatty acids, medium-chain fatty acids, ω-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, palmitoleic acid (ω-7) and other high-value oils. Future prospects are discussed, with a focus on the cutting-edge techniques in camelina such as genome editing application, fine directed manipulation of metabolism and future outlook for camelina industry development.
Highlights
Plant seed oils enriched in triacylglycerols (TAGs) consisting of three fatty acids esterified to a glycerol backbone are energy-dense molecules that are utilized for energy production in the life cycle of plants (Athenstaedt and Daum, 2006)
The seed-specific co-expression of one acyl-ACP-Δ9Des with strong specificity for 16:0-ACP and two acyl-CoA-Δ9Des with strong specificity for 16:0-CoA resulted in an increase in the accumulation of w-7 FAs in the seeds of transgenic camelina from 0.6% in the wild-type to 17%. In this transgenic camelina, resynchronizing the RNAi silencing of endogenous CsKASII and CsFatB further increased the w-7 FA content to an average of 60% of total lipids, and the saturated fatty acid content was correspondingly reduced from 12% in wild-type to 5% in transgenic seeds
This review described genetic improvements of the seed oil quality in camelina, focusing on the metabolic pathway assembly of novel fatty acids/ oils with multiple nutritional and industrial applications
Summary
Plant seed oils enriched in triacylglycerols (TAGs) consisting of three fatty acids esterified to a glycerol backbone are energy-dense molecules that are utilized for energy production in the life cycle of plants (Athenstaedt and Daum, 2006). An increased understanding has been made on plant lipid metabolism and its regulation, coupled by well characterization of fatty acid biosynthesis, modification and assembly into TAGs (Cahoon et al, 2002; Kagale et al, 2014) With this information and the wealth of genetic diversity for synthesis of novel fatty acids and storage oils, plant seeds have been developing as platform for the design and tailoring of biochemical pathways to synthesize diverse nutritional and industrial oils not currently found in oilseed crops (Haslam et al, 2016). We discuss the cutting-edge research directions in camelina such as genome editing application, a flexible and useful substrate for applied synthetic biology, and future outlook for camelina industry development
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