Chapter 6 Fatty acid biosynthesis in higher plants

This chapter examines the present status of the biosynthesis of fatty acids in higher plants. For a number of years, the general outline of fatty acid biosynthesis in extracts or isolated organelles derived from a variety of plant tissues has become quite well defined. However, precise knowledge concerning the localization of the fatty acid synthetase (FAS) systems was not available until the techniques of protoplast isolation and disruption were developed. More recently with the advent of sensitive assay systems and the development of methods for the chemical and enzymic synthesis of acyl acyl carrier protein (ACP), research into the individual enzymes of the FAS could be conducted. By using these and other techniques, investigators have recently shown that higher-plant FAS systems are prokaryotic in molecular structure, i.e. are non-associated enzyme proteins - both in the leaf cell and in the seed cell. This chapter, therefore, describes these results as they apply to a variety of plant tissues.