About this Research Topic
Edible oil provides essential nutrient for human body, while different oil crops, such as soybean, peanut, oilseed, castor, sunflower and oil palm, produce 96% triacylglycerides in their oil and have different fatty acid composition. Fatty acids are divided into saturated and unsaturated, and the latter type is beneficial for health. Therefore, a principal objective of oil crop breeding is to increase unsaturated fatty acid content and decrease saturated fatty acid content. Moreover, fatty acids with various carbon-chain lengths have diverse usages, such as biodiesel fuel or lubricating oil. The most widely distributed fatty acids are 16- and 18-carbon fatty acids, known as palmitic acid and stearic acids, respectively. The saturated fatty acids are significantly associated with raising the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), and affect cholesterol metabolism - increasing low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density lipoprotein (HDL) cheolesterol. Therefore, cultivating novel oil crop varieties with improved fatty acid compositions is critical for producing healthier oils for human consumption or for other special usages.
In model plant ‘Arabidopsis thaliana’, substantial research has been done to elucidate genes involved in the fatty acid biosynthesis pathway, which occurs mainly in the plastids and endoplasmic reticulum. However, there are enormous variations in oil content and fatty acid compositions in different oil crops, which indicates different molecular mechanism of fatty acid biosynthesis. This Research Topic will provide new insights into Arabidopsis and oil crops, including molecular mechanisms of fatty acid biosynthesis, new metabolism in Arabidopsis, novel lipid metabolic engineering, biotechnology, genetic and breeding, and genetic evaluation of fatty acid variation in different germplasm resources.
The Research Topic mainly focuses on the following aspects:
1. Insights into new approaches to dissecting the genetic locus of complex fatty acid traits and development of molecular markers closely linked with the variation of fatty acid compositions.
2. Relevance of multiple omics to the study of molecular mechanisms underlying fatty acid biosynthesis in oil crops.
3. Gene-editing studies to improve fatty acid composition for healthier oil for human consumption or for other special uses.
4. Critical assessment of different oil crop germplasm resources, and their physiological relevance with phenotypic variations of fatty acid compositions
5. Identification of mechanisms involved in new metabolism in Arabidopsis and novel lipid metabolic engineering, and their significance
Descriptive studies that report responses of growth, yield or quality to agronomical treatments will not be considered if they do not progress physiological understanding of these responses.
In model plant ‘Arabidopsis thaliana’, substantial research has been done to elucidate genes involved in the fatty acid biosynthesis pathway, which occurs mainly in the plastids and endoplasmic reticulum. However, there are enormous variations in oil content and fatty acid compositions in different oil crops, which indicates different molecular mechanism of fatty acid biosynthesis. This Research Topic will provide new insights into Arabidopsis and oil crops, including molecular mechanisms of fatty acid biosynthesis, new metabolism in Arabidopsis, novel lipid metabolic engineering, biotechnology, genetic and breeding, and genetic evaluation of fatty acid variation in different germplasm resources.
The Research Topic mainly focuses on the following aspects:
1. Insights into new approaches to dissecting the genetic locus of complex fatty acid traits and development of molecular markers closely linked with the variation of fatty acid compositions.
2. Relevance of multiple omics to the study of molecular mechanisms underlying fatty acid biosynthesis in oil crops.
3. Gene-editing studies to improve fatty acid composition for healthier oil for human consumption or for other special uses.
4. Critical assessment of different oil crop germplasm resources, and their physiological relevance with phenotypic variations of fatty acid compositions
5. Identification of mechanisms involved in new metabolism in Arabidopsis and novel lipid metabolic engineering, and their significance
Descriptive studies that report responses of growth, yield or quality to agronomical treatments will not be considered if they do not progress physiological understanding of these responses.
Keywords: oil crops, peanut, soybean, oilsed, sunflower, palm oil, complex fatty acids, saturated fatty acids, unsaturated fatty acids, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, palmitic acid, stearic acid
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