Plant Lipid Metabolism: Newly Discovered Superfamily Could Modify The Plant Oils
Scientists studying plant biochemistry and discovered new details about biomolecules that modify the oil production. Researchers are mainly studying the several classes of biomolecules that are involved in oil synthesis and degradation process using cells, animals and plants as a model system. The findings suggest that disabling and strengthen particular superfamily member in the plants modify the oil production. A new strategy for generating abundant oils to overcome the high demand of edible oil in our country. Fat and Oils are an essential part of our diet and primarily used in many food industries due to their nutritional importance. About 85% of the oil is consumed from the plant sources. Our country ranks third in oil consumption with 212. 7 million tons in 2016 and imports more than 65% of edible oil from other countries. Demand for plant edible oil is high in India. In order to meet this demand, the scientist finds out an alternative way of increasing the oil contents in plants by studying the essential biomolecules.
Recently, alpha-beta hydrolase domain protein (ABHD) family is considered as a superfamily among the scientists. This family is present in most of the organisms and human has 22 family members and does different biochemical functions like our professional life. The superfamily members expression found in various human tissues. Notably, these great family members have conserved set of amino acid sequence called “motifs” that associated with different hydrolase/lipase/esterase and acyltransferase activities respectively that are necessary for the proper biochemical functions both in humans and plants. Disruption of these functions in metabolic pathways leads to many diseases in humans such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases also altered the lipid profiles in the plants. Understanding the biochemical mechanism in humans is necessary for successful drug developments against these diseases. However, a few members function is known in human. Similarly, the metabolism does exist in plants. Plants synthesise and store lipids in seeds. However, the process differs in some ways when compared to human beings. The superfamily is considered to be a large family of proteins in the model organism plant Arabidopsis thaliana. This plant is closely related to other oil crops, but very little is known about this superfamily. The model plant has around 43 superfamily members, but many of their function is unclear.
Researchers at the CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) at Mysore have carried out a detailed examination to understand how plant store the lipids (oils) in the seeds. Prof Ram Rajasekharan (Former Director of CFTRI and CSIR Headquarters, New Delhi) team are using basic science in an effort “to discover how plants control the fatty acids into the storage oil which we humans use in our daily diet also for many industrial purposes. ” Every forward reaction has a backward response in life as my supervisor said, “Once we know how oil is stored and produced in plants, we can engineer the plants to accumulate more oils with improved fatty acid compositions. It could enhance the nutritional balance in our diet or have enhanced desired characteristics by understanding oil metabolism in details’’ At one end we want to increase the amount of oil production in plants by studying the superfamily biomolecules.
On the other hand, find out a reverse mechanism to control this in humans targeting lipid metabolic diseases. Abolishing superfamily member 5 in plants, accumulated the nonpolar lipids in the leaves of this model plants as our previous research. Our recent research on another member ABHD11 in the plant, surprisingly increased the galactolipids in the leaves also altered the plant growth compared to the wild-type plants. The work has been done at the lipidomics laboratory of the institute. The study was published in the plant physiology journals in the year 2008 and 2015. This clearly illustrates the role of superfamily in lipid metabolism and alteration of metabolites in plants. This writer is an emerging student of Prof. Ram Rajasekharan and Dr Usharani D. Still, the subfamily genes mechanisms in plants are surprising. The team has taken an interest in studying essential superfamily members in the plants based on the location, expression and its exciting finding on the sequence domain in their protein. To address this problem, the writer is cloned this identified gene ABHD16B from the model plants, overexpressed and purified for further research analysis. With an advanced computational facility within the CFTRI campus, Dr Usharani D (Principal scientist) and we build the 3-dimensional superfamily member structure to understand its role, interacting partner within the organisms. The superfamily structure is not known in the model plants. Like the first time, we address this problem.
In contrast, it leads to modify the plant oil contents by disabling or strengthing these biomolecules once we know the active sites of the magnificent family members in plants. In vitro plant cell culture, and biochemical studies are under the process to reveal its surprising roles in the oil metabolic pathways.
By combining computational and in vitro experiments, it is possible to design plant oil compositions specific to our healthy needs in plants for the modern generation. Also, it gives clues for drug development against the targeting metabolic diseases in humans. ” Understanding the in-depth mechanism of these superfamily biomarkers 16B give clues for drug development against the human current metabolic diseases. At another end, the superfamily could modify and alter the plant oils content. In-depth knowledge is required on plant superfamily to disclose its function concerning to the oil metabolisms.
