RESEARCH-PGR: Discovering new metabolic constraints and regulatory nodes in oilseeds engineered for enhanced fatty acid synthesis and seed oil

植物油是食物、燃料和化学品的可再生来源；到2030年，世界植物油产量必须翻一番才能满足预计需求。植物油的主要来源是种子。虽然研究已经在种子油的数量和质量上取得了进步，但在蛋白质含量和产量等其他种子属性上也存在折衷。例如，经过培育或改造以生产高籽油的植物通常会降低蛋白质含量或产生更少的种子。驱动这种权衡的分子机制尚不清楚，并为生产具有特定油脂和蛋白质含量的改良作物制造了障碍。本项目旨在揭示与油分、蛋白质含量、种子大小和结实度之间权衡相关的遗传和分子机制，以提高作物种子含油量。通过采用综合方法，该项目将研究种子用于优先考虑蛋白质或油生产的生化步骤。利用这些知识，该项目将培育出具有更高种子油产量的植物。此外，该项目利用种子油科学促进STEM教育，培养未来的科学家，并为正在培训成为未来STEM教师的学生开发一项利用实践研究经验的科学素养计划。该项目的科学和教育成果将通过提高作物的产油量，对研究和社会产生广泛的影响。高油大豆、亚麻荠和拟南芥的定量比较分析将揭示对去调控的新生FAS的协调代谢反应。这些发现将揭示工程种子含油量的下一个代谢约束，发现参与酰基脂质代谢的新基因，并为植物脂质群落提供具有特征的高含油量种质，用于基因堆叠和比较基因组学。本项目将整合fas工程高油植物种子发育三个阶段的比较转录组学、蛋白质组学和翻译组学，建立相关和动力学模型，进行代谢预测，并发现协同调节的基因网络。通量分析和聚类模型将用于将高油种质与中枢和脂质联合代谢网络中的因果效应联系起来，并用于为下一代作物改良做出假设。体内FAS速率方面，FAS与TAG合成的解偶联可能导致FAS和分解的无效循环；和脂质代谢网络中的酰基通量将被研究，以阐明由于FAS去调节而导致TAG积累的新瓶颈。作为该项目的一部分而开发的网络资源（fatplants.net）将用于教育社区，并提供整合代谢和基因调控的互动工具。整合的工具对于激励未来的科学家和工程师以及实现所有年龄段的多学科培训是必要的。该项目还将为未来的科学和技术教育者开发一个动手科学素养计划（Sci-FEST），并由项目参与者创建关于植物代谢和生物技术的高中科学教学模块。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Plant oils are a renewable source of food, fuels, and chemicals; world output of plant oils must double by 2030 to meet projected demand. A major source of plant oils comes from seeds. While research has yielded improvements in seed oil quantity and quality, there are tradeoffs for other seed attributes such as protein content and yield. For example, plants that are bred or engineered to produce high seed oil often have decreased protein content or make fewer seeds. The molecular mechanism driving such tradeoffs remains unclear and creates a barrier for making improved crops with specific amounts of oil and protein content. This project seeks to unravel the genetic and molecular mechanisms related to the tradeoffs between oil, protein content, seed size, and seed set in order to enhance seed oil content of crops. By using an integrated approach, this project will investigate biochemical steps used by seeds to prioritize protein or oil production. Using this knowledge, this project will generate plants with improved seed oil production. In addition, this project promotes STEM education using the science of seed oils to train tomorrow's scientists as well as develops a science literacy program using hands-on research experience for students who are training to become future STEM teachers. The scientific and educational outcomes of this project will have broad impacts for both research and society through improved oil production in crop plants.Quantitative, comparative profiling of high-oil soybean, Camelina, and Arabidopsis will reveal the coordinated metabolic response to de-regulated de novo FAS. These findings will reveal the next metabolic constraint for engineering seed oil content, discover new genes involved in acyl lipid metabolism, and provide the plant lipid community with characterized, high-oil germplasm for gene stacking and comparative genomics. This project will integrate comparative transcriptomics, proteomics, and translatomics during three stages of seed development of FAS-engineered, high-oil plants to develop correlative and kinetic models to make metabolic predictions, and discover coregulated gene networks. Flux analyses and clustering models will be used to link high-oil germplasm to causal effects within combined central and lipid metabolic networks and used to make hypotheses for next-generation crop improvements. Aspects of in vivo FAS rates, the uncoupling of FAS from TAG synthesis that can lead to futile cycles of FAS and breakdown; and acyl fluxes through the lipid metabolic network will be investigated to elucidate new bottlenecks for TAG accumulation as a result of de-regulating FAS. Web resources (fatplants.net) developed as a part of this project will serve to educate the community and provide an interactive tool to integrate metabolism and gene regulation Integrated tools are necessary to inspire tomorrow's scientists and engineers and enable multidisciplinary training of all ages. This project will also develop a hands-on science literacy program for future educators of science and technology (Sci-FEST) and high school science teaching modules on plant metabolism and biotechnology will be created by the program participants.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.