METABOLIC ENGINEERING OF PLANT LIPIDS

Lipid metabolism in plants provides uncommon opportunities for genetic engineering to produce plant oils suited to a variety of end-uses. Th ese opportunities include improvement of food and nutritional value, c reating specialty lipids and feedstocks for high-value products and de signing custom-made materials for industry. Genetic engineering interv ention for production of novel transgenic plants which elaborate the d esired product has graduate from academic exercise to commercial possi bilities. It is now realized that transgenic crops can serve as biolog ical factories for upscaling production of premium lipids via molecula r farming. This review is an attempt at analyzing the status in this f ield.