Identification and Characterization of Genes Regulating Biogenesis of Oil Body

Abstract

Oil body is an organelle abundantly found in cells of fatty seed. This organelle has simple structure of having large quantity of triacylglycerol as seed reserved lipid surrounded by a monolayer membrane of phospholipid. It has been suggested that oil body is produced from specific domain of endoplasmic reticulum. However, detailed mechanism of oil body formation is still obscure. In this study, we tried to identify and characterize mutants containing oil body with aberrant morphology to understand mechanism of oil body formation at molecular level. We will describe phenotype of one of the mutants and discuss function of the mutated gene in relation to mechanism of oil body formation during embryogenesis.