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Improving linolenic acid content in rapeseed oil by overexpression of CsFAD2 and CsFAD3 genes

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Abstract

With the increasing public attention to the health benefit of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and demand for linolenic acid (C18:3), it is of great significance to increase the C18:3 content in our meal. As an oil crop with high content of C18:3, Camelina sativa has three homologous copies of FAD2 and three homologous copies FAD3. In this study, we seed-specifically overexpressed two Camelina sativa fatty acid desaturase genes, CsFAD2 and CsFAD3, in rapeseed cultivar Zhongshuang 9. The results show that C18:3 content in CsFAD2 and CsFAD3 overexpressed seeds is increased from 8.62% in wild-type (WT) to 10.62–12.95% and 14.54–26.16%, respectively. We crossed CsFAD2 and CsFAD3 overexpression lines, and stable homozygous digenic crossed lines were obtained. The C18:3 content was increased from 8.62% in WT to 28.46–53.57% in crossed overexpression lines. In addition, we found that the overexpression of CsFAD2 and CsFAD3 had no effect on rapeseed growth, development, and other agronomic traits. In conclusion, we successfully generated rapeseed germplasms with high C18:3 content by simultaneously overexpressing CsFAD2 and CsFAD3, which provides a feasible way for breeding high C18:3 rapeseed cultivars.

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Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (32225037), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2662022ZKPY001), the Hubei Hongshan Laboratory (2021HSZD004), the HZAU-AGIS Cooperation Fund (SZYJY2022008), and the Higher Education Discipline Innovation Project (B20051).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Hubei Hongshan Laboratory, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Yunhao Liu, Zhuolin Du, Ying Li, Shaoping Lu, Shan Tang & Liang Guo

  2. Shenzhen Institute of Nutrition and Health, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Liang Guo

  3. Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, 518000, China

    Liang Guo

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  1. Yunhao Liu
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  2. Zhuolin Du
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  3. Ying Li
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  4. Shaoping Lu
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  5. Shan Tang
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  6. Liang Guo
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Contributions

L.G. and S.T. designed and supervised this study. Y.L., Z.D., and Y.L. performed the experiments. Y.L. and Y.L. analyzed the data. Y.L. wrote the manuscript. L.G., S.T., and S.L. revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shan Tang or Liang Guo.

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Liu, Y., Du, Z., Li, Y. et al. Improving linolenic acid content in rapeseed oil by overexpression of CsFAD2 and CsFAD3 genes. Mol Breeding 44, 9 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-024-01445-0

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