PRODUCTION OF INDUSTRIAL MATERIALS IN TRANSGENIC PLANTS

Millions of tonnes of organic chemicals, or polymeric derivatives, are produced annually from agricultural plants. Genetic engineering metho ds can be used to modify the chemical composition of the storage compo unds in many plant species. This will create opportunities to expand t he uses of biomaterials as renewable and environmentally more benign a lternatives to some uses of petrochemicals. Many of the most promising opportunities, in this respect, involve relatively minor modification s of the chemical composition of plant oils. The introduction of a sin gle functional group into a fatty acid may create new industrial uses for the fatty acid and, therefore, significantly increase the value of the oil. Because different species of higher plants accumulate at lea st 210 different kinds of fatty acids, the genetic resources are avail able to support the production of a wide variety of modifications of a gricultural oilseed species by genetic engineering. In addition, a lar ge number of useful modifications may be produced by introducing genes for fatty-acid modifying enzymes, or related aspects of metabolism, f rom microorganisms.