Mining the oil code: New insights behind oil production in Brassica napus

Like all living organisms, plants require organic and inorganic nutrients to survive, reproduce, grow and maintain homeostasis. To identify nutrients that are essential for plant functioning, researchers have leveraged a technique called hydroponics. In hydroponic culture systems, plants are grown—without soil—in water-based solutions containing nutrients. At least 17 nutrients have been identified as essential elements required by plants. Plants acquire these elements from the...

Though evaporation from plant leaves drives transpiration, it also results in loss of water. Because water is critical for photosynthetic reactions and other cellular processes, evolutionary pressures on plants in different environments have driven the acquisition of adaptations that reduce water loss.

Ribulose 1,5- bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCo) is a critical enzyme that catalyzes carbon dioxide assimilation during photosynthesis. However, it is an inefficient enzyme, having an extremely slow catalytic rate. A typical enzyme can process about a thousand molecules per second; however, RuBisCo fixes only around three-carbon dioxides per second. Photosynthetic cells compensate for this slow rate by synthesizing very high amounts of RuBisCo, making it the most abundant single...