BBSRC Renewable Industrial Products from Rapeseed (RIPR) Programme

油菜在商业上是可行的，因为除了主要产品（油）之外，还可以开发副产品（富含蛋白质的动物饲料）。然而，许多其他有价值的产品可以提取和商业化开发，为作物增加价值。这一机会对于菜籽油的新兴工业应用（例如JIC最近生产的热稳定油类型）尤为重要，如果该产品要在商业上取得成功，并因此得到足够广泛的采用以实现相关的环境效益，则必须在价格上与矿物油竞争。副产物的连续纯化被称为“生物精炼”。新出现的机会包括来自菜籽油的生育酚（维生素E）和植物甾醇（降低胆固醇的化合物），来自豆荚壁和茎的蜡（具有蚜虫驱避特性和医疗特性），以及来自茎的功能性多糖（包括高价值稳定剂，表面活性剂和屏障）。尽管从在物种如拟南芥中进行的研究中在一定程度上已知这些化合物的合成中涉及的生物合成途径，但尚不了解其积累的定量控制（化合物产量的关键）。这些产品尚未成为育种者进行作物改良的焦点，因此没有改良的种质，也没有分子标记可用于辅助育种。同样，人们对油菜籽使用化肥的效率知之甚少，但化肥的优化对于矿物油替代品的商业化生产至关重要，因为化肥既昂贵又可能对环境造成破坏。将疾病或其他性状与DNA序列变异相关联的方法已成为人类遗传学的关键工具，并已在少数植物中成功应用。大多数作物的缺点是传统方法成本高昂。然而，测序技术和基因组学的最新进展导致了一种称为关联转录组学的技术的出现，这使得这种方法对大多数作物都是可行的。在这种方法中，DNA序列变异的搜索集中在基因序列上，基因表达的变异也被利用;两者都为性状变异提供了非常大的潜在“标记”。该技术最近已使用甘蓝型油菜（包括油菜作为其作物类型之一的物种）的小型遗传多样性小组得到证明，并准备扩大到全面和广泛使用的遗传多样性小组，即称为ASSYST小组。这种方法非常适合于对知之甚少的性状进行初始遗传分析，因为它可以快速估计遗传复杂性，发展控制性状的假设，并产生可用于辅助育种的分子标记。拟议的研究旨在利用关联转录组学来识别与控制一系列生物精炼目标和肥料使用性状相关的基因。所有数据都将公开提供。将检查显示与性状变异相关的序列或表达变异的基因的注释。假设将开发的控制所涉及的途径和预测能力的分子标记所产生的基因序列和/或表达变异和性状变异之间的关系。这些将通过在来自收集的不同植物系的杂交和/或来自经化学处理以诱导基因序列变异的群体的植物系的选择和测试之后的性状的定量分析来测试。利用所获得的知识，将开发数学模型，以帮助行业估计优化新品种开发的经济和环境后果。

Oilseed rape is commercially viable because a co-product can be exploited (a protein-rich feed for animals) in addition to the primary product (oil). However, many other valuable products could be extracted and exploited commercially, adding value to the crop. This opportunity is particularly important for emerging industrial applications of rapeseed oil (such as thermally-stable oil types produced recently by JIC), where the product must compete on price with mineral oil if it is to be successful commercially and hence adopted sufficiently widely to realize the associated environmental benefits. The serial purification of co-products is termed "bio-refining". Emerging opportunities include tocopherols (vitamin E) and phytosterols (cholesterol lowering compounds) from rapeseed oil, waxes (with aphid-repellent properties and those with medical properties) from pod walls and stems, and functional polysaccharides (including high-value stabilisers, surfactants and barriers) from stems. Although the biosynthetic pathways involved in the synthesis of these compounds are known to some extent from studies conducted in species such as Arabidopsis thaliana, the quantitative control of their accumulation (key to yield of the compounds) is not understood. Such products have not been foci for crop improvement by breeders, so there is no improved germplasm and no molecular markers are available to aid breeding. Similarly, the efficiency with which fertilizer is used by rapeseed is poorly understood, but its optimization is essential for the commercial production of substitutes for mineral oil as fertilizer is both expensive and potentially damaging to the environment.The approach of associating disease or other traits with DNA sequence variation has become a key tool in human genetics and has also been applied successfully in a few plants. The drawback for most crops is that the traditional approach has been expensive. However, recent advances in sequencing technology and genomics has led to the emergence of a technology termed Associative Transcriptomics, which makes this approach accessible for most crops. In this approach, the search for DNA sequence variation is focussed on gene sequences and variation for gene expression is also exploited; both providing very large sets of potential "markers" for trait variation. The technology has been proven recently using a small genetic diversity panel of Brassica napus (the species that includes oilseed rape as one of its crop types) and is ready for scale-up to a full and widely-used genetic diversity panel, i.e. that termed the ASSYST panel. This approach is ideally suited to the initial genetic analysis of traits for which little is know as it quickly enables the estimation of genetic complexity, the development of hypotheses for the control of traits and produces molecular markers that can be used to assist breeding.The proposed research aims to exploit Associative Transcriptomics to identify genes associated with the control of a range of bio-refining targets and fertilizer use traits. Data will all be made publicly available. The annotations of genes showing either sequence or expression variation associated with trait variation will be examined. Hypotheses will be developed for both the control of the pathways involved and predictive capabilities of molecular markers arising from the identified relationships between gene sequence and/or expression variation and trait variation. These will be tested by the quantitative analysis of traits following the inter-crossing of different plant lines from the collection and/or the selection and testing of plant lines from a population chemically treated to induce gene sequence variation. Using the knowledge gained, mathematical models will be developed to help industry estimate economic and environmental consequences of the development of optimised new cultivars.