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Camelina sativa is a short-cycle oilseed plant that belongs to the Brassicaceae family, whose oil is of interest for oleochemical industry. It is genetically close to the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and its transformation process is relatively simple. One of the main drawbacks of camelina oil is its high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and very long chain fatty acids (VLCFAs), which makes it unstable and raise its melting point. In this regard, the lipid metabolism of camelina was previously genetically engineered to obtain lines that accumulate palmitic acid (16:0) or palmitoleic acid (16:1), being the latter of high interest because of its stability and low viscosity, properties that enable the development of industrial products such as biolubricants. However, these lines produce high levels of PUFAs and VLCFAs. Therefore, our aim is to obtain stable camelina lines rich in high oleic (18:1) acid. To achieve this goal it is necessary to reduce the activity of the fatty acid desaturase 2 (FAD2) enzyme, as well as repress the enzyme fatty acid elongase 1 (FAE1). Moreover, further modifi cations are made in order to increase the total amount of oils produced by the Camelina seeds. The biotin/lipoyl attachment domain containing (BADC) proteins, a set of negative regulators of the acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase), will knockdown too. All these modifi cations will be carried out using the hair- pin RNA technique, proved to be especially effi cient to repress gene expression in camelina. |
