Modification of seed oil quantitative trait using Chimeric Repressor Gene-Silencing Technology (CRES-T)

Abstract

It is generally considered that plant seed oil is a potent resource for bio-diesel fuel and bio-plastics. However, there have been a few examples of molecular breeding that successfully increase the oil content of plant seeds.
In this study, to find out genes that could regulate seed oil storage, we prepared the chimeric repressor of 200 transcription factors, and were introduced into Arabidopsis thaliana individually and the oil contents of T2 seeds were measured by 1H-pulse NMR. Some strains were obtained whose oil contents were increased about 10 % in comparison with those of wild type. In these strains, fatty acid compositions of storage oil were not changed and in some these strains, dry biomass weight and seeds weight per a plant were also increased. This result shows that CRES-T system is very useful not only functional analysis of transcription factors but also molecular breeding of plant quantitative trait.