Δ-9 elongases and their use in making polyunsaturated fatty acids
AssigneeE. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company
InventorsHoward Glenn Damude, Quinn Qun Zhu
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Abstract
The present invention relates to Δ9 elongases, which have the ability to convert linoleic acid (LA; 18:2 ω-6) to eicosadienoic acid (EDA; 20:2 ω-6) and/or α-linolenic acid (ALA; 18:3 ω-3) to eicosatrienoic acid (ETrA; 20:3 ω-3). Isolated nucleic acid fragments and recombinant constructs comprising such fragments encoding Δ9 elongases along with a method of making long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) using these Δ9 elongases in oleaginous yeast are disclosed.
Claims8
A method for the production of at least one polyunsaturated fatty acid selected from the group consisting of eicosadienoic acid and eicosatrienoic acid comprising:
- a) providing a transformed microbial host cell comprising:
- (i) a recombinant nucleotide molecule encoding a polypeptide having delta-9 elongase activity, wherein the polypeptide has at least 90% amino acid identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, when compared to the amino acid sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:13 or SEQ ID NO:14;
- and
- (ii) a source of a substrate polyunsaturated fatty acid selected from the group consisting of linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid;
- b) growing the transformed microbial host cell of step (a) under conditions wherein linoleic acid is converted to eicosadienoic acid and alpha-linolenic acid is converted to eicosatrienoic acid;
- and
- c) optionally recovering the eicosadienoic acid and/or eicosatrienoic acid of step (b).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.