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Folate fortification of rice by metabolic engineering

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Abstract

Rice, the world's major staple crop, is a poor source of essential micronutrients, including folates (vitamin B9). We report folate biofortification of rice seeds achieved by overexpressing two Arabidopsis thaliana genes of the pterin and para-aminobenzoate branches of the folate biosynthetic pathway from a single locus. We obtained a maximal enhancement as high as 100 times above wild type, with 100 g of polished raw grains containing up to four times the adult daily folate requirement.

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Figure 1: Engineering folate biosynthesis.
Figure 2: Analysis of PABA, pterins and folate content in seeds of transgenic rice plants.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from Ghent University (Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds, GOA 1251204) to D.V.D.S. and W.L.

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Author notes

  1. Guo-Fang Zhang

    Present address: Present address: Department of Nutrition, Case Western Reserve University, 2109 Adelbert Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-4906, USA.,

  2. Veerle De Brouwer and Maarten Volckaert: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Genetics, Unit Plant Hormone Signalling and Bio-imaging, Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, Ghent, B-9000, Belgium

    Sergei Storozhenko, Maarten Volckaert, Oscar Navarrete, Dieter Blancquaert & Dominique Van Der Straeten

  2. Laboratory of Toxicology, Ghent University, Harelbekestraat 72, Ghent, B-9000, Belgium

    Veerle De Brouwer, Guo-Fang Zhang & Willy Lambert

Authors
  1. Sergei Storozhenko
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  2. Veerle De Brouwer
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  3. Maarten Volckaert
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  4. Oscar Navarrete
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  5. Dieter Blancquaert
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  6. Guo-Fang Zhang
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  7. Willy Lambert
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  8. Dominique Van Der Straeten
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Contributions

S.S., experimental design, molecular cloning and analysis of transgenic lines; M.V., rice transformation, plant culture and genomic DNA isolation; O.N. and D.B., expression analysis; V.D.B., G.-F.Z. and W.L., development and application of chromatographic analyses; D.V.D.S., experimental design, initiation and coordination of the research project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dominique Van Der Straeten.

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Supplementary Figures 1–3, Supplementary Tables 1–4, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Note (PDF 760 kb)

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Storozhenko, S., De Brouwer, V., Volckaert, M. et al. Folate fortification of rice by metabolic engineering. Nat Biotechnol 25, 1277–1279 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1351

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1351

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