"Deciphering Bottlenecks Within Designer Oilseed Engineering: What Controls Fatty Acid Flux?," will be presented by Philip Bates of the University of Southern Mississippi at 4 p.m., Oct. 7 in E103 Beadle Center. The seminar is free and open to the public.
Plant oils are a versatile commodity that can be utilized for food, chemicals or bio-fuels. Essential to the different uses is the fatty acid composition of the oil. Throughout the biosphere, different plant species produce thousands of different oil compositions.
However, production of designer oilseeds with controlled fatty acid compositions through metabolic engineering has been challenging. Our recent results indicate that plant oil biosynthesis is a metabolic network rather than a linear pathway. The flux of fatty acids through alternative branches of the oil biosynthetic network affects fatty acid modification and oil composition. We demonstrate that the flux of fatty acids through the membrane lipid phosphatidylcholine represents a key bottleneck within oilseed engineering. The differential fatty acid flux through this key intermediate may be responsible for various levels of engineering success within different host plant species.
The Beadle Center is located at 1901 Vine Street. The complete schedule of seminars may be found at http://biotech.unl.edu/.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/pn4e