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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Isolation and Chemical Characterization of Lipid A from Gram-negative Bacteria
Published on: September 16, 2013
Isolation and characterization of a calendic acid producing (8,11)-linoleoyl desaturase
K Fritsche1, E Hornung, N Peitzsch
1Leibniz Institut für Pflanzenbiochemie, Weinberg, Halle, Germany.
Abstract:
For the biosynthesis of calendic acid a (8,11)-linoleoyl desaturase activity has been proposed. To isolate this desaturase, PCR-based cloning was used. The open reading frame of the isolated full-length cDNA is a 1131 bp sequence encoding a protein of 377 amino acids. For functional identification the cDNA was expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and formation of calendic acid was analyzed by RP-HPLC. The expression of the heterologous enzyme resulted in a significant amount of calendic acid presumably esterified within phospholipids. The results presented here identify a gene encoding a new type of (1,4)-acyl lipid desaturase.
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