Biosynthesis of very long polyunsaturated omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in transgenic japonica rice (oryza sativa l)

Abstract

In this research, the fatty acid pathway was modified to produce the C20 polyunsaturated fatty acid arachidonic acid (ARA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) by co-expression the genes encoding omega-3 fatty acid desaturase (SK-FAD3) from Saccharomyces kluyveri, δ9-elongase (IgASE1) from Isochrysis galbana, δ8-desaturase (efd1) from Euglena gracilis and δ5-desaturase from Mortierella alpina (Mortδ5) in japonica rice plant through Agrobacterium tumafaciens transformation method. The Southern hybridization analysis has confirmed the integration of these four transgenes and showed the presence of one copy number for each transgene in all five lines of T0 transgenic rice (T0-1, T0-2, T0-3, T0-4 and T0-5). The GC analysis showed the presence of new fatty acids eicosadienoic acid (EDA), eicosatrienoic acid (ETrA) and arachidonic (ARA) in transformed leaves of T0 and T1 compare to wild type. Further analysis of total fatty acid content in seeds showed that linolenic acids (LA) was increased at 1-2% in T0-2, T0-4 and T0-5 while a-linolenic acid (ALA) content accumulated up to 0.2% in T0-4 of transformed plant