Development of Camelina as Oilseed Platform for Advanced Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology

The use of crop plants for complex metabolic engineering to produce novel, high-value materials has lagged behind microbial systems due in part to the technically demanding and labor-intensive nature of plant transformation methods.  This has sparked growing interest in the emerging oilseed crop camelina (Camelina sativa) as a platform for advanced metabolic engineering and synthetic biology.  Camelina, a member of the mustard or Brassicaceae family, has a relatively short life cycle (100-120 days) and accumulates vegetable oils to ~40% of its seed weight.  Most importantly, camelina is highly amenable to Agrobacterium-based transformation using a floral vacuum infiltration method that requires minimal laboratory skill and labor input.  To capture the potential of camelina as a high-throughput metabolic engineering platform, we have developed an extensive tool box of seed-specific promoters and visual and herbicide resistance-based selection markers for construction of multi-gene expression vectors.  With these vector systems, we have succeeded in generating a number of advanced biofuel and bio-based material traits as components of camelina seed oil.  These have included a six transgene trait for production of oil with high levels of novel omega-7 monounsaturated fatty acids as polyurethane precursors and the transfer of genes from jojoba to produce wax ester-enriched oils for high temperature lubricants as a sustainable replacement for sperm whale oil.