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Updated: Oct 15, 2025

Environmentally Induced Heritable Changes in Flax
Published on: January 26, 2011
Integument-Specific Transcriptional Regulation in the Mid-Stage of Flax Seed Development Influences the Release of
Fabien Miart1, Jean-Xavier Fontaine1, Gaëlle Mongelard2
1Laboratoire de Biologie des Plantes et Innovation, UMRT 1158 INRA BioEcoAgro, UPJV, UFR des Sciences, 33 rue Saint Leu, F-80039 Amiens, France.
Abstract:
Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) seed oil, which accumulates in the embryo, and mucilage, which is synthesized in the seed coat, are of great economic importance for food, pharmaceutical as well as chemical industries. Theories on the link between oil and mucilage production in seeds consist in the spatio-temporal competition of both compounds for photosynthates during the very early stages of seed development. In this study, we demonstrate a positive relationship between seed oil production and seed coat mucilage extrusion in the agronomic model, flax. Three recombinant inbred lines were selected for low, medium and high mucilage and seed oil contents. Metabolite and transcript profiling (1H NMR and DNA oligo-microarrays) was performed on the seeds during seed development. These analyses showed main changes in the seed coat transcriptome during the mid-phase of seed development (25 Days Post-Anthesis), once the mucilage biosynthesis and modification processes are thought to be finished. These transcriptome changes comprised genes that are putatively involved in mucilage chemical modification and oil synthesis, as well as gibberellic acid (GA) metabolism. The results of this integrative biology approach suggest that transcriptional regulations of seed oil and fatty acid (FA) metabolism could occur in the seed coat during the mid-stage of seed development, once the seed coat carbon supplies have been used for mucilage biosynthesis and mechanochemical properties of the mucilage secretory cells.
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