Molecular and biochemical analysis of the castor caruncle reveals a set of unique genes involved in oil accumulation in non-seed tissues.

Background: With the increasing demand for vegetative oil and the approach of peak seed oil production, it is important to develop new oil production platforms from non-seed tissues. Castor bean () is one of the crops for vegetable oil for industrial applications with yield around 1.4 ton oil per hectare produced in seed.

Comparison of the Substrate Preferences of ω3 Fatty Acid Desaturases for Long Chain Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids.

Omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (ω3 LC-PUFAs) such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 20:5ω3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22:6ω3) are important fatty acids for human health. These ω3 LC-PUFAs are produced from their ω3 precursors by a set of desaturases and elongases involved in the biosynthesis pathway and are also converted from ω6 LC-PUFA by omega-3 desaturases (ω3Ds). Here, we have investigated eight ω3-desaturases obtained from a cyanobacterium, plants, fungi and a lower animal species for their activities and compared their specificities for various C18, C20 and C22 ω6 PUFA substrates by transiently expressing them in leaves.

Proteomics reveals the in vitro protein digestibility of seven transmembrane enzymes from the docosahexaenoic acid biosynthesis pathway.

The measurement of protein digestibility is one of the key steps in determining the safety of a genetically modified crop that has been traditionally accomplished using antibodies. Membrane proteins are often extremely difficult to express with replicated authentic tertiary structure in heterologous systems. As a result raising antibodies for use in safety assessment may not be feasible.

Quantitation of seven transmembrane proteins from the DHA biosynthesis pathway in genetically engineered canola by targeted mass spectrometry.

Examining tissue-specific expression and the measurement of protein abundance are important steps when assessing the performance of genetically engineered crops. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry offers many advantages over traditional methods for protein quantitation, especially when dealing with transmembrane proteins that are often difficult to express or generate antibodies against. In this study, discovery proteomics was used to detect the seven transgenic membrane-bound enzymes from the docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) biosynthetic pathway that had been engineered into canola.