Improved Industrial Properties by Genetic
Enrichment of Specific Fatty Acid
Components of Soybean Oil
Considerable potential exists for an expanded use of
soybean oil as a renewable chemical feedstock. However,
the physical and chemical properties of conventional
soybean oil limit its use for many industrial
applications. Soybean oil is a complex mixture of five
fatty acids (palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, and linolenic
acids) that have vastly differing melting points,
oxidative stabilities, and chemical functionalities. In this
regard, genetic engineering approaches can be applied
to enrich the content of soybean oil for a particular fatty
acid or class of fatty acids. The most notable example,
developed by researchers at DuPont, is the transgenic
production of soybean seeds with oleic acid content of
approximately 80% of the total oil (Kinney, 1997). Conventional
soybean oil, by comparison, contains oleic
acid at levels of 25% of the total oil. The high oleic acid
trait was obtained by down-regulating the expression of
FAD2 genes that encode the enzyme that converts the