Delta-9 elongases and their use in making polyunsaturated fatty acids
Isolated nucleic acid fragments and recombinant constructs comprising such fragments encoding delta-9 elongases along with a method of making long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) using these delta-9 elongases in plants.
1. A recombinant construct comprising an isolated polynucleotide comprising:
(a) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having delta-9 elongase activity, wherein the polypeptide has at least 95% amino acid identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, when compared to an amino acid sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:5;
(b) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having delta-9 elongase activity, wherein the nucleotide sequence has at least 95% sequence identity, based on the BLASTN method of alignment, when compared to a nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:4 or SEQ ID NO:90; or
(c) a complement of the nucleotide sequence of (a) or (b) wherein the complement and the nucleotide sequence consist of the same number of nucleotides and are 100% complementary;
wherein said isolated polynucleotide of (a) or (b) is operably linked to at least one regulatory sequence.
2. A method for producing a transgenic plant comprising transforming a plant cell with the recombinant construct of claim 1 and regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant cell.
3. The method of claim 2 wherein the transgenic plant is a soybean plant.
4. A transgenic seed comprising the recombinant construct of claim 1 .
5. A transgenic seed obtained from the plant made by the method of claim 2 or 3 .
6. An oilseed plant comprising the recombinant construct of claim 1 .
7. The oilseed plant of claim 6 , wherein the oilseed plant is selected from the group consisting of soybean, Brassica species, sunflower, maize, cotton, flax and safflower.
8. A seed obtained from the oilseed plant of claim 6 , wherein said seed comprises the recombinant construct.
9. Progeny plants obtained from the transgenic seed of claim 4 , wherein said plants comprise the recombinant construct.
10. Progeny plants obtained from the transgenic seed of claim 5 , wherein said plants comprise the recombinant construct.
11. Progeny plants obtained from the seed of claim 8 , wherein said plants comprise the recombinant construct.