Toxin Content of Commercial Castor Cultivars

Transgenic and Genome Editing Approaches for Modifying Plant Oils

Vegetable oils are important for human and animal nutrition and as renewable resources for chemical feedstocks. We provide an overview of transgenic and genome editing approaches for modifying plant oils, describing useful model and crop systems and different strategies for transgenic modifications. We also describe new genome editing approaches that are beginning to be applied to oilseed plants and crops. These approaches are illustrated with examples for modifying the nutritional quality of vegetable oils by altering fatty acid desaturation, producing non-native fatty acids in oilseeds, and enhancing the overall accumulation of oil in seeds and leaves.

Milk matrix effects on antibody binding analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and biolayer interferometry

Biolayer interferometry (BLI) was employed to study the impact of the milk matrix on the binding of ricin to asialofetuin (ASF) and to antibodies. This optical sensing platform used ligands immobilized covalently or via biotin-streptavidin linkage, and the results were compared to those obtained by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In sandwich ELISA, the binding of ricin to ASF was dramatically decreased when galactose was present during the analyte or detection antibody binding step. Low concentrations of milk (1%, v/v) produced a similar reduction in ricin binding to ASF but not to a high-affinity monoclonal antibody (mAb), increasing the dissociation rate of ASF-ricin complexes up to 100-fold. The effect of milk on the binding of ricin to ASF was ascribable to dialyzable factors, and milk sugar can account for these effects. The use of high-affinity mAbs in ELISA effectively limits the milk matrix effect on ricin analysis.