AUTHOR=Lu Shaoping , Aziz Mina , Sturtevant Drew , Chapman Kent D. , Guo Liang 

TITLE=Heterogeneous Distribution of Erucic Acid in Brassica napus Seeds

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.01744

DOI=10.3389/fpls.2019.01744

ISSN=1664-462X

ABSTRACT=<p><italic>Brassica napus</italic> (<italic>B. napus</italic>) is the world's most widely grown temperate oilseed crop. Although breeding for human consumption has led to removal of erucic acid from refined canola oils, there is renewed interest in the industrial uses of erucic acid derived from <italic>B. napus</italic>, and there is a rich germplasm available for use. Here, low- and high-erucic acid accessions of <italic>B. napus</italic> seeds were examined for the distribution of erucic acid-containing lipids and the gene transcripts encoding the enzymes involved in pathways for its incorporation into triacylglycerols (TAGs) across the major tissues of the seeds. In general, the results indicate that a heterogeneous distribution of erucic acid across <italic>B. napus</italic> seed tissues was contributed by two isoforms (out of six) of <italic>FATTY ACYL COA ELONGASE</italic> (<italic>FAE1)</italic> and a combination of phospholipid:diacylglycerol acyltransferase (PDAT)- and diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT)-mediated incorporation of erucic acid into TAGs in cotyledonary tissues. An absence of the expression of these two <italic>FAE1</italic> isoforms accounted for the absence of erucic acid in the TAGs of the low-erucic accession.</p>