Journal of Integrative Plant Biology 2009 Oil Body Biogenesis during Brassica napus

Although the oil body is known to be an important membrane enclosed compartment for oil storage in seeds, we have little understanding about its biogenesis during embryogenesis. In the present study we investigated the oil body emergence and variations in Brassica napus cv. Topas. The results demonstrate that the oil bodies could be detected already at the heart stage, at the same time as the embryos began to turn green, and the starch grains accumulated in the chloroplast stroma. In comparison, we have studied the development of oil bodies between Arabidopsis thaliana wild type (Col) and the low-seed-oil mutant wrinkled1–3. We observed that the oil body development in the embryos of Col is similar to that of B. napus cv. Topas, and that the size of the oil bodies was obviously smaller in the embryos of wrinkled1–3. Our results suggest that the oil body biogenesis might be coupled with the embryo chloroplast. Key words: Arabidopsis thaliana; Brassica napus; chloroplast; embryogenesis; oil body. He YQ, Wu Y (2009). Oil body biogenesis during Brassica napus embryogenesis. J. Integr. Plant Biol. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-7909.2009.00851.x Available online at www.jipb.net The oil body is a unique oil storage organelle. It possesses a core of neutral lipids or triacylglycerol (TAG) surrounded by a half-unit membrane (Huang 1992; Tzen and Huang 1992