Growing Prospects
John Shanklin holds a plant whose seeds provide a high level of ω-7 fatty acids.
Source: Brookhaven National Laboratory.
"Our new way of providing a feedstock sourced from fatty acids in plant seeds would be renewable and sustainable indefinitely," notes John Shanklin, a biochemist at Brookhaven who led the research. "…Our research shows that high levels of the appropriate feedstock can be made in plants."
"This proof-of-principle experiment is a successful demonstration of a general strategy for metabolically engineering the sustainable production of ω-7 fatty acids as an industrial feedstock source from plants," he adds.
The researchers now are performing further metabolic engineering to boost fatty acid levels even more. "We think 85% should be achievable," says Shanklin.
Their efforts focus on a common laboratory plant, Arabidopsis. Its growth and development reportedly were unaffected by the genetic modifications and accumulation of ω-7 fatty acids.
The seeds hold particular promise for plastic precursors. Ethenolytic metathesis of the ω-7 fatty acids produces 1-octene and 9-decenoate. The octene, now largely derived from ethylene, already is consumed at significant volumes to make linear low-density polyethylene, note the researchers.
Several academic and industrial research groups are working to improve metathesis catalysts, says Terrence Walsh, a research fellow at Dow AgroSciences.
"There are still significant technical hurdles to converting the potential feedstocks made in our proof-of-concept study into plastic precursors. This will require some significant technical breakthroughs over several years. One barrier is the development of an effective and cost-competitive catalytic process for converting plant-derived fatty-acid feedstocks into plastic precursors. Also, the genetic system for feedstock production that we demonstrated in a model plant will have to be transferred into an oilseed crop for large-scale production," Walsh explains.
