Plant science is opening up promising opportunities to create bioproducts that are less harmful to the environment. The Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is looking at innovative approaches.
New types of vegetable oils with fatty acid structures allow production of biomaterials in large quantities. Scientists must conduct complex research to understand the oils' genes in order to create those oils.
The research done by Ed Cahoon and his colleagues is making a difference. Cahoon's research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as in Nebraska's Center for Plant Science Innovation and Department of Biochemistry.
The project studied a particular type of fat in a vine. The plant chemicals that make up the acid give new functional properties to vegetable oils. The researchers needed to understand the enzymes that created the fat. The plants that are genetically engineered to have the fatty acid are more suited to be produced by these enzymes.
Genetically modified Sorghum is a focus of Cahoon and his colleagues. Sorghum's fatty acid has the potential to be used in the production of bio-based products.
Cahoon is the 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. The understanding of the oilseedidases and their three-dimensional structures is what leads to such efforts.
Cahoon and his colleagues write in their new paper that studies of unusual monounsaturated fatty acids have provided a wealth of biochemical information. The oil is liquid at room temperature but solid in the freezer.
In their analysis of Thunbergia, Cahoon and his colleagues looked at Petroselinic acid. The plant's seeds were found to be rich in acid, which can be used as a biomaterial. The weight of the seed oils was dominated by Petroselinic acid.
"Thunbergia is a nice ornamental vine, but we could never grow it as a crop in Nebraska," said Cahoon, the center's director. We can engineer the genes that make the unusual fatty acid into oilseed crops to make higher value oils.
The IANR was funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's center for advanced bioenergy and bioproducts innovation. Scientists from all over the country are contributing to the center.
The "plants-as-factories" concept is one of the focuses of the center for advanced bioenergy and bioproducts innovation. The center notes that Sorghum, along with sugarcane, is one of the world's highest producers of bioenergy.
Cahoon said that the IANR research has a fundamental aspect to it of learning new things. The second part is to use that information to design new types of oils.
A three part division of labor was featured in this research project. The initial discovery of the high level of Petroselinic acid was made by Cahoon. Cahoon's lab in the Center for Plant Science Innovation has two scientists who isolated the genes for the plant'sidases. The fatty acid desaturase is one of the enzymes that was identified. The functional properties of the vegetable oils have been improved.
Structural biologists Qun Liu and John Shanklin performed analyses of the three-dimensional structure of the enzyme. The design of new fatty acid desaturases was influenced by this information.
The camelina oilseed was genetically engineered to produce oil rich in acid.
Cahoon has been interested in developing new oilseed with innovative benefits. He pursued "bioprospecting", searching a wide range of plants in search of seeds with a high level of unusual fatty acid that may have novel industrial value, due to his interest going back to his graduate school days.
He said that bioprospecting is not new in the scientific community. Generations of researchers have studied plants and the chemicals they produce. Medicinal properties of plants have led to the discovery of some drugs. The long-noted properties of willow bark gave rise to aspirin.
After studying several species of Thunbergia he had ordered online, Cahoon discovered the oilseed's high level of unusual Fatty Acid. He was inspired by his bioprospecting to study the oilseed of the Chinese violet cress. He was working with a scientist at the university.
The scientists named one of the acids after a Chinese researcher who lived in China.
What about the other fat acids? nebraskanic acid is now designated as a noxious substance. It's an excellent lubricant that could be used to substitute for oil in the future.
More information: Lu Gan et al, Divergent evolution of extreme production of variant plant monounsaturated fatty acids, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2201160119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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