Oil plant genomes: current state of the science

Abstract

Vegetable oils are indispensable nutritional components of human diet as well as important raw materials for a variety of industrial applications such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, oleochemicals and biofuels. The oil plant genomes are highly diverse, and the genetic variation leads to the diversity in oil biosynthesis and accumulation along with agronomic traits. This review discusses the plant oil biosynthetic pathways, the current state of genome assembly, the polyploidy and asymmetric evolution genomes of oil plants and their wild relatives, and the research progress of pan-genomics in oil plants. The availability of complete high-resolution genomes and pangenomes has enabled the identification of structural variations in the genomes that are associated with the diversity of agronomic and environment fitness traits. These and more future genomes also provide powerful tools to understand crop evolution and to harvest the rich natural variations to improve oil crops for enhanced productivity, oil quality, and adaptability to changing environments.

Transcriptional regulation of oil biosynthesis in seed plants: Current understanding, applications, and perspectives

“…For plants, TAG serves as a major carbon and energy source to support seed germination and seedling development. For humans, plant oils are not only essential as a component of the diet, providing about one-fourth of dietary calories in developed countries, but also important as a source of carbon-neutral fuels and raw materials for industrial products, such as lubricants, detergents, and nylon ( Chapman and Ohlrogge, 2012 ; Covas et al., 2015 ; Kong et al., 2020a ; Song et al., 2021b ). Global demand for vegetable oils is increasing rapidly and is projected to double by 2030 ( Chapman and Ohlrogge, 2012 ), incentivizing a tremendous amount of research effort to enhance plant oil biosynthesis.…”

Recent advances in metabolic engineering of microorganisms for advancing lignocellulose-derived biofuels

“…The attempts to encourage the production of TAG in vegetative tissue have mainly focused on the integrated concept (pull, push, package, and protect) of single or multiple genetic interventions [ 59–69 ], resulting in augmented TAG levels with better compositional facets in distinct non-food crops ( Table 1 ). However, in a model plant, Tobacco , the highest TAG yield (30–33% DW) to date was achieved by combinatorial optimization of TAG biosynthetic pathways [ 67 ], but it is not always straightforward as these pathways are highly conserved across different species [ 70 ].…”

Molecular basis of the key regulator WRINKLED1 in plant oil biosynthesis

“…In developed countries, vegetable oils provide approximately one-fourth of dietary calories. The global demand for vegetable oil is increasing very rapidly, which necessitates increased oil production ( 1 , 5 , 6 ).…”