What is it about?
The paper describes how the scientists engineered a strain of duckweed, Lemna japonica, to accumulate oil at close to 10 percent of its dry weight biomass. That’s a dramatic, 100-fold increase over such plants growing in the wild—with yields more than seven times higher than soybeans, today’s largest source of biodiesel.
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Why is it important?
Duckweeds are amongst the fastest growing of higher plants, making them attractive high-biomass targets for biofuel feedstock production. Their fronds have high rates of fatty acid synthesis to meet the demand for new membranes, but triacylglycerols (TAG) only accumulate to very low levels. Here we report the engineering of Lemna japonica for the synthesis and accumulation of TAG in its fronds. The paper describes how the scientists engineered a strain of duckweed, Lemna japonica, to accumulate oil at close to 10 percent of its dry weight biomass. That’s a dramatic, 100-fold increase over such plants growing in the wild—with yields more than seven times higher than soybeans, today’s largest source of biodiesel.
Perspectives
At a conservative 12 tonnes (dry matter) per acre and 10% (DW) TAG, duckweed could produce 350 gallons of oil/acre/year, approximately 7-fold the yield of soybean, and similar to that of oil palm. These findings provide the foundation for optimizing TAG accumulation in duckweed and present a new opportunity for producing biofuels and lipidic bioproducts.
Yuanxue LIANG
Brookhaven national labrotory
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Engineering Triacylglycerol Accumulation in Duckweed (
Lemna japonica
), Plant Biotechnology Journal, October 2022, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/pbi.13943.
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