Protein interactomes for plant lipid biosynthesis and their biotechnological applications

Abstract

SummaryPlant lipids have essential biological roles in plant development and stress responses through their functions in cell membrane formation, energy storage and signalling. Vegetable oil, which is composed mainly of the storage lipid triacylglycerol, also has important applications in food, biofuel and oleochemical industries. Lipid biosynthesis occurs in multiple subcellular compartments and involves the coordinated action of various pathways. Although biochemical and molecular biology research over the last few decades has identified many proteins associated with lipid metabolism, our current understanding of the dynamic protein interactomes involved in lipid biosynthesis, modification and channelling is limited. This review examines advances in the identification and characterization of protein interactomes involved in plant lipid biosynthesis, with a focus on protein complexes consisting of different subunits for sequential reactions such as those in fatty acid biosynthesis and modification, as well as transient or dynamic interactomes formed from enzymes in cooperative pathways such as assemblies of membrane‐bound enzymes for triacylglycerol biosynthesis. We also showcase a selection of representative protein interactome structures predicted using AlphaFold2, and discuss current and prospective strategies involving the use of interactome knowledge in plant lipid biotechnology. Finally, unresolved questions in this research area and possible approaches to address them are also discussed.

CRISPR/Cas9‐based genome editing of 14 lipid metabolic genes reveals a sporopollenin metabolon ZmPKSB‐ZmTKPR1‐1/‐2 required for pollen exine formation in maize

“…A prerequisite to defining such enzyme associations as metabolons is to prove their PPIs (Zhang and Fernie, 2021 ). Considering that the detection of such transient and dynamic enzyme complexes is more difficult than that of stable protein complexes, multi‐approaches are required to test such PPIs, including biochemical experiments in vivo and in vitro and structure‐based methods (Norris et al ., 2022 ; Xu et al ., 2023 ; Yu et al ., 2023 ). In Arabidopsis , rice and Brassica napus , the PPIs in the sporopollenin metabolon consisting of ACOS‐PKS‐TKPR have been identified by Y2H, BiFC, CoIP, GST‐pulldown and FLIM/FRET assays (Lallemand et al ., 2013 ).…”

Arabidopsis ACYL CARRIER PROTEIN4 and RHOMBOID LIKE10 act independently in chloroplast phosphatidate synthesis

“…Furthermore, the physical interaction between acyl-ACP and thioesterases in microalgae has also been demonstrated to be crucial for thioesterase substrate preference ( Blatti et al 2012 ). Increasing evidence supports the presence of lipid biosynthetic interactomes and their importance in modulating lipid metabolism, though further research is needed to elucidate the nature and mechanisms of this noncatalytic regulation of lipid metabolism ( Xu et al 2019 ; Busta et al 2022 ; Xu et al 2023 ).…”

Multi‐omics‐driven advances in the understanding of triacylglycerol biosynthesis in oil seeds

“…Major oilseeds, including native, cultivated, and wild accessions, are rich in germplasm resources, which can be obtained from germplasm GenBank. The germplasm centers for major oilseeds have been discussed in several reviews (Ashraf et al., 2018; Kane et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2020; Witzel et al., 2021; Yang, Gao, et al., 2023; Yang, Stacy, et al., 2023; Zhang, Liu, et al., 2022). Although different from other herbaceous crops, high‐seed‐oil maize does not exist in nature, so the creation of high‐oil maize germplasm resources by directional selection lays a foundation for functional genomics research in the signal output quality (SOQ) of maize.…”

“…Sequencing technologies rapidly produce a large amount of sequence information in plants (Vischi Winck, 2021). Several reviews have discussed and summarized the progress of genome sequencing in major oilseeds (Ashraf et al., 2018; Mochida & Shinozaki, 2011; Vischi Winck, 2021; Yang, Stacy, & Chen, 2023; Zhang, Liu, et al., 2022). Recently, the high‐quality reference genomes for soybean, cotton, and maize were released by jointly utilizing NGS technologies and single‐molecule sequencing platforms (Badouin et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2023; Shen et al., 2019; Yang, Liu, et al., 2019).…”