LINCOLN, Nebraska, Plant science is opening up promising opportunities to create environmentally friendly bioproducts fuels, lubricants and other products that substitute for petroleum-based ones. Researchers with the University of Nebraska-Lincolns Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources are exploring a range of innovative approaches.

A key focus involves new types of vegetable oils with fatty acid structures that enable production of biomaterials in significant quantity. To create those oils on the needed scale, scientists first must conduct complex research to understand the oils enzymes and genes.

Research by Husker biochemist Ed Cahoon and colleagues is advancing this scientific knowledge. The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently published the findings by Cahoon and his collaborators in Nebraskas Center for Plant Science Innovation and Department of Biochemistry, the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, Prince of Songkla University in Thailand and Huazhong Agricultural University in China.

The IANR project studied a specific, unusual fatty acid in Thunbergia, a tropical vine. The acid is unusual in that the plant chemicals have unconventional molecular chains that give new functional properties to vegetable oils. Understanding the enzymes that create the fatty acid was essential for the researchers. Because of their distinct properties, these enzymes are particularly suited to produce genetically engineered plants rich in the fatty acid.

GMO SORGHUM

Genetically modified sorghum, for example, lends itself well to such genomic modification and is a focus of Cahoon and his IANR colleagues. Once modified in that way, sorghums fatty acid has strong potential for facilitating production of biofuels and biomaterials.

Nature makes enzymes do certain things, said Cahoon, George W. Holmes Professor of biochemistry. If we can learn from the plants that do something different, we can design the enzymes to have new functions, such as creation of specialty chemicals. Such efforts are known as protein engineering, stemming from the understanding of the oilseed enzymes and their three-dimensional structures.

As Cahoon and his colleagues write in their new paper, studies of unusual monounsaturated fatty acids have provided a wealth of biochemical information and biotechnological utility. (Monounsaturated fats have a double bond in their molecular structure, resulting in the oil being liquid at room temperature but solid when chilled.)

Petroselinic acid was the main unusual fatty acid studied by Cahoon and his colleagues in their analysis of Thunbergia. The scientists found the plants seeds to be extraordinarily rich in the acid, which has strong biomaterials potential. Petroselinic acid accounted for more than 90% of the seed oils weight.

Thunbergia is a nice ornamental vine and looks beautiful, but we could never grow it as a crop in Nebraska, said Cahoon, director of the Center for Plant Science Innovation. But we can find the genes that make the unusual fatty acid, and we can then engineer them into sorghum and oilseed crops to create higher-value oils.

FIVE-YEAR GRANT

The IANR research was funded through a $3.8 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energys Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation. Cahoon and Thomas Clemente, Eugene W. Price Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology at Nebraska, are among the array of scientists nationwide contributing to research for the center.

Among the focuses of the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation is a plants-as-factories concept by which genetic engineering produces plant cells with bioproducts-related properties. Sorghum, along with sugarcane, is one of the worlds highest biomass producers, the center notes, with demonstrated potential for accumulation of oil in vegetative biomass after successful metabolic engineering.

The IANR research has both a fundamental aspect to it of learning new things about fatty acids and enzymes, Cahoon said. The second part is trying to use that information to design new types of oils that might have increased-value industrial applications and biofuels.

This research project featured a basic three-part division of labor. Cahoon, the principal investigator, made the initial discovery of Thunbergia oilseeds extraordinarily high level of petroselinic acid. Lu Gan and Kiyoul Park, postdoctoral scientists in Cahoons lab in the Center for Plant Science Innovation, isolated the genes for enzymes the plant uses to make the fatty acid. Among the enzymes identified was an enzyme known as a fatty acid desaturase that introduces double bonds unsaturation in novel places in fatty acids. As a result, those fatty acids have new functional properties of vegetable oils.

Structural biologist Qun Liu and biochemist John Shanklin at Brookhaven National Laboratory carried out complex analyses of the enzymes three-dimensional structure. This information guided the design of new fatty acid desaturases that can create monounsaturated fatty acids not found in nature.

Nebraskas Gan and Park then genetically engineered camelina oilseed to produce petroselinic acid-rich vegetable oils.

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Research shows oilseeds' potential for bioproduct creation - The Fence Post