Delta-5 desaturase and its use in making polyunsaturated fatty acids

Abstract

Isolated nucleic acid fragments and recombinant constructs comprising such fragments encoding delta-5 desaturase along with a method of making long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) using this delta-5 desaturase in plants and oleaginous yeast are disclosed.

1 - 36 . (canceled) 
     
     
         37 . Food or feed comprising a transgenic seed obtained from an oilseed plant comprising a recombinant DNA construct comprising a polynucleotide selected from the group consisting of
 (a) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having delta-5 desaturase activity, wherein the polypeptide has an amino acid sequence of at least 90% amino acid identity, based on the Clustal W method of alignment provided by the MegAlign™ v6.1 program of the DNASTAR LASERGENE bioinformatics computing suite (default parameters: GAP PENALTY=20, GAP LENGTH PENALTY=0.2, Delay Divergen Seqs (%)=30, DNA Transition Weight=0.5, Protein Weight Matrix=Gonnet Series, DNA Weight Matrix=IUB), when compared to an amino acid sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:2;   (b) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having delta-5 desaturase activity, wherein the nucleotide sequence has at least 90% sequence identity, based on the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (“BLASTN”) method of alignment provide by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (default parameters: short queries=automatically adjust parameters for short input sequences, expect threshold=10, and filter=low complexity regions), when compared to a nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:1 or SEQ ID NO:3; and   (c) a complement of the nucleotide sequence of (a) or (b), wherein the complement and the nucleotide sequence consist of the same number of nucleotides and are 100% complementary;   operably linked to at least one regulatory sequence, wherein the transgenic seed comprises the recombinant DNA construct.   
     
     
         38 . The food or feed of  claim 37 , wherein the nucleotide sequence comprises SEQ ID NO:1 or SEQ ID NO:3. 
     
     
         39 . The food or feed of  claim 37 , wherein the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide of step (a) comprises:
 (i) SEQ ID NO:2; or   (ii) an amino acid sequence that differs from the amino acid sequences in (a) by at least one conservative amino acid substitution.   
     
     
         40 . The food or feed of  claim 37 , wherein oilseed plant further comprises at least one additional recombinant DNA construct comprising an isolated polynucleotide, operably linked to at least one regulatory sequence, encoding a polypeptide selected from the group consisting of a delta-4 desaturase, a delta-5 desaturase, a delta-6 desaturase, a delta-8 desaturase, a delta-12 desaturase, a delta-15 desaturase, a delta-17 desaturase, a delta-9 desaturase, a delta-9 elongase, a C14/16 elongase, a C16/18 elongase, a C18/20 elongase and a C20/22 elongase. 
     
     
         41 . The food or feed of  claim 37 , wherein the oilseed plant is selected from the group consisting of soybean,  Brassica  species, sunflower, maize, cotton, flax and safflower.