Abstract
Soybean oil has a wide variety of uses, and stearic acid, which is a relatively minor component of soybean oil is increasingly desired for both industrial and food applications. New soybean mutants containing high levels of the saturated fatty acid stearate in seeds were recently identified from a chemically mutagenized population. Six mutants ranged in stearate content from 6–14% stearic acid, which is 1.5 to 3 times the levels contained in wild-type seed of the Williams 82 cultivar. Candidate gene sequencing revealed that all of these lines carried amino acid substitutions in the gene encoding the delta-9-stearoyl-acyl-carrier protein desaturase enzyme (SACPD-C) required for the conversion of stearic acid to oleic acid. Five of these missense mutations were in highly conserved residues clustered around the predicted di-iron center of the SACPD-C enzyme. Co-segregation analysis demonstrated a positive association of the elevated stearate trait with the SACPD-C mutation for three populations. These missense mutations may provide additional alleles that may be used in the development of new soybean cultivars with increased levels of stearic acid.
Highlights
Stearic acid is one of the component fatty acids in soybean oil, comprising 2–4% of the total oil fraction
Three soybean genes have been characterized with homology to delta-9-stearoyl-acyl carrier protein desaturases (SACPDs) which are required for the conversion of stearic acid to oleic acid [3]
Mutant plants with high levels of stearic acid in seeds were identified in an ongoing screen for soybean seed with altered fatty acid composition and six lines were chosen for further characterization
Summary
Stearic acid is one of the component fatty acids in soybean oil, comprising 2–4% of the total oil fraction. FAM94-41 is a spontaneously occurring change in the SACPD-C gene and results in plants with levels of stearic acid in the seed of ,9% [5]. Deletion of the SACPD-C gene in the A6 germplasm line results in up to 28% stearic acid in the seed, but the size of this deletion is uncharacterized [4,6].
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