Exploring the biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids in Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579 and functional characterization of novel acyl-lipid desaturases.

At low temperatures, Bacillus cereus synthesizes large amounts of unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs) with double bonds in positions Δ5 and Δ10, as well as Δ5,10 diunsaturated fatty acids. Through sequence homology searches, we identified two open reading frames (ORFs) encoding a putative Δ5 desaturase and a fatty acid acyl-lipid desaturase in the B. cereus ATCC 14579 genome, and these were named BC2983 and BC0400, respectively.