AN UNUSUAL FATTY-ACID PATTERN IN ERANTHIS SEED OIL

The current discussion on ''renewable resources'', and the possibility of gene transfer into rapeseed, has led to many investigations into t he biosynthetic pathways leading to industrially useful fatty acids. T he various tribes and genera of the plant family Ranunculaceae contain a large variety of unusual fatty acids. Seed fatty acid patterns diff er considerably from genus to genus and are chemotaxonomically signifi cant indicators. Eranthis seed oil has now been found to contain a fat ty acid pattern that deviates significantly from the eleven different fatty acid patterns that had been described in this plant family. The main fatty acid (up to 57%) is 13-cis,16-cis-docosadienoic acid. Other , minor fatty acids found are Delta 5-cis-monoenoic, -dienoic, and -tr ienoic fatty acids that had already been reported to be constituents o f the genus-specific seed oil fatty acid patterns of various genera fr om this plant family. Capillary gas-liquid chromatographic retention d ata indicate that 22:3 Delta 5cis,13cis,16cis is probably also present . Seed fatty acid chemotaxonomic evidence thus points to a different p osition of Eranthis within the tribes of this plant family. These find ings again indicate that the plant family Ranunculaceae would be an id eal object to study fatty acid biosynthesis and phylogenetic evolution , because in other genera of this family other types of desaturation a nd chain elongation mechanisms predominate.