ISHS Acta Horticulturae 769: XXVII International Horticultural Congress - IHC2006: International Symposium on Asian Plants with Unique Horticultural Potential
THE MAIN GENES CONTROLLING THE BIOSYNTHESIS OF FATTY ACIDS IN CAMELLIA OLEIFERA SEEDS |
| Authors: | Dang-Quan Zhang, Xiao-Feng Tan, Lu-Shan Xie, Jian Qiu, Fang-Ming Hu |
| Keywords: | Camellia oleifera, fatty acids, cDNA library, EST library, expressed genes |
| Abstract:
Tea-oil tree (Camellia oleifera) is one of the most important edible oil trees in China, whose kernel has the oil-yielded rate of about 55%. The recent researches suggested that the oiliness of tea-oil as the Chinese specialty should exceed that of olive oil, for 90% of tea-oil is unsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, which are very salutary to human beings. However, researches on Camellia oleifera were mostly focused on the planting/breeding and characteristic analysis of its products, and lacked those to find out the molecular mechanism of forming high quality tea-oil. In order to determine the reason, we used EST library technology to find out the main genes controlling the biosynthesis of fatty acids in Camellia oleifera seeds. A high quality full-length cDNA library was successfully constructed using the nearly matured seeds of elite cultivar planted widely in China, then 2327 clones were randomly selected for sequencing from the 5´ orientation to construct a high representational EST library. Based on the homological and bioinformatic analyses of this EST library, we obtained 15 main genes (8 kinds) controlling the biosynthesis of fatty acids in Camellia oleifera seeds: 1 acyl carrier protein (ACP) gene, 3 stearoyl-ACP desaturase (SAD) genes, 3 fatty acid desaturase (FAD) genes, 3 palmitoyl-acyl carrier protein thioesterase (FatB1) genes, 1 propionyl-coenzyme A synthase (PCAS) gene, 1 enoyl-CoA hydratase (ECAH) gene, 2 acetyl-CoA acetyltransferase (ACAA) genes, 1 very-long-chain fatty acid condensing enzyme gene. Above results basically reflect the expression situation of main genes controlling the fatty acid biosynthesis in Camellia oleifera seeds, presenting theoretical and technical foundation for the development of Camellia oleifera elite genes and genetic improvement on other oil plants. | |
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