Antisense RNA-mediated inhibition of GMFAD2–1 encoding Omega-6-Desaturase

Antisense RNA-mediated inhibition of gene expression is a valuable tool to metabolically engineer the composition of oilseeds to improve their nutritional value and provide the functional properties required for various purposes. To improve the efficiency of fad 2–1 inhibition and to selectively suppress it in developing seeds of soybean an antisense construct was designed in two stages. In the first stage, the PCR amplified conserved fad 2–1 gene sequence was cloned in the antisense orientation with respect to seed-specific (vicilin) promoter derived from pCW66 vector. In the second stage, the chimeric cassette was inserted in a plant transforming vector carrying “bar” gene and kanamycin resistance gene for plant selection. Efficacy of the chimeric construct was checked in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.