Regulatory nucleic acid molecules for enhancing seed-specific gene expression in plants promoting enhanced polyunsaturated fatty acid synthesis
AssigneeBASF Plant Science GmbH
InventorsToralf Senger, Jörg Bauer, Josef Martin Kuhn
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Abstract
The invention in principle pertains to the field of recombinant manufacture of fatty acids. It provides novel nucleic acid molecules comprising nucleic acid sequences encoding fatty acid desaturases, elongases, acyltransferases, terminator sequences and high expressing seed-specific promoters operatively linked to the said nucleic acid sequences wherein nucleic acid expression enhancing nucleic acids (NEENAs) are functionally linked to said promoters.
Claims16
A polynucleotide comprising:
- a) at least one nucleic acid sequence encoding a polypeptide having desaturase or elongase activity;
- b) at least one seed-specific plant promoter operatively linked to the nucleic acid sequence of a);
- c) at least one terminator sequence operatively linked to the nucleic acid sequence of a);
- and
- d) at least one nucleic acid expression enhancing nucleic acid (NEENA) molecule functionally linked to the promoter of b),
- wherein said at least one NEENA molecule is heterologous to the promoter of b) and to the polypeptide of a),
- wherein said at least one NEENA molecule comprises a nucleotide sequence having at least 95% sequence identity to the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:
- 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 or 24,
- wherein said at least one NEENA molecule is not able to drive expression of the nucleic acid sequence of a) but is able to enhance expression of said nucleic acid sequence when functionally linked to the promoter of b),
- and wherein said at least one NEENA molecule enhances seed-specific expression of said nucleic acid sequence of a) in the plant or part thereof as compared to a corresponding control plant or part thereof.
A method for enhancing expression of at least one enzyme of the polyunsaturated fatty acid biosynthetic pathway in a plant or part thereof, comprising transforming a plant or part thereof with a polynucleotide comprising:
- i) at least one nucleic acid sequence encoding a polypeptide selected from the group consisting of:
- a) a polypeptide having desaturase or elongase activity;
- b) a polypeptide having beta-ketoacyl reductase activity;
- c) a polypeptide having dehydratase activity;
- and
- d) a polypeptide having enoyl-CoA reductase activity;
- ii) at least one seed-specific plant promoter operatively linked to the nucleic acid sequence of i);
- iii) at least one terminator sequence operatively linked to the nucleic acid sequence of i);
- and
- iv) at least one nucleic acid expression enhancing nucleic acid (NEENA) molecule functionally linked to the promoter of ii),
- wherein said at least one NEENA molecule is heterologous to the promoter of ii) and to the nucleic acid sequence of i),
- wherein said at least one NEENA molecule comprises a nucleotide sequence having at least 95% sequence identity to the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:
- 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 or 24,
- wherein said at least one NEENA molecule is not able to drive expression of the nucleic acid sequence of i) but is able to enhance expression of said nucleic acid sequence when functionally linked to the promoter of ii),
- and wherein said at least one NEENA molecule enhances seed-specific expression of said nucleic acid sequence of i) in the plant or part thereof as compared to a corresponding control plant or part thereof.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.