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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Bioproducts Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #325655

Research Project: Domestic Production of Natural Rubber and Industrial Seed Oils

Location: Bioproducts Research

Title: Application of genomic tools for lesquerella crop improvement

Author
item Chen, Grace

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/27/2016
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Lesquerella, a potential new industrial oilseed crop, is valued for its unusual hydroxy fatty acid (20:1OH) which can be used as raw materials for numerous industrial products, such as lubricants, plasticizers and surfactants. As a step towards genetic engineering of lesquerella, we explored a lesquerella seed transcriptome that generated 651 megabases of raw sequences, 59,914 transcripts, and 26,995 unique genes. These unique genes were found to represent all known seed expressed genes. Based on Arabidopsis acyl-lipid metabolism database, we identified 615 lesquerella genes for all known pathways in acyl-lipid metabolism. Using quantitative real-time PCR assays, we characterized the expression profiles of 15 key genes involved in oil biosynthesis in various tissues of lesquerella. Our results provide critical information for future design of genetic engineering experiments to control HFA production in plants.