Patent ID: 8049062

Claim:
A method for producing at least one polyunsaturated fatty acid in a soybean cell comprising: (a) transforming a soybean cell with a first recombinant construct comprising an isolated polynucleotide comprising: (i) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having delta-9 elongase activity, wherein the polypeptide has at least 70% amino acid identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, when compared to an amino acid sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:5; (ii) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having delta-9 elongase activity, wherein the nucleotide sequence has at least 70% sequence identity, based on the BLASTN method of alignment, when compared to a nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:4 or SEQ ID NO:90; (iii) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having delta-9 elongase activity, wherein the nucleotide sequence hybridizes with a nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:90 or SEQ ID NO:126 under the following stringent hybridization conditions:0.1. times.SSC, 0.1% SDS, 65.degree. C. and washed with 2.times.SSC, 0.1% SDS followed by 0.1.times.SSC, 0.1% SDS: or (iv) a complement of the nucleotide sequence of (i), (ii) or (iii), 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 and at least one additional recombinant 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-12 desaturase, a delta-15 desaturase, a delta-17 desaturase, a delta-8 desaturase, a C 14/16 elongase, a C 16/18 elongase, a C 18/20 elongase and a C 20/22 elongase; (b) regenerating a soybean plant from the transformed soybean cell of step (a); and (c) selecting those seeds obtained from the plants of step (b) having an altered level of polyunsaturated fatty acids when compared to the level in seeds obtained from a nontransformed soybean plant.