No more fishes: Plants as a bio-factory for omega-3 fatty acid

The benefits of Omega-3 (-3) fatty acids, which include -linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid, and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), for human health are well-known.They are essential for controlling obesity, cholesterol levels, cancer onset, and inflammation.One of the known sources for omega-3 fatty acids is deep-sea fishes and fish-derived oils.However, dietary constraints, limited supply, cost, and rigid isolation processes have forced us to explore other natural sources for omega-3 fatty acids.Plants could be an alternative and sustainable source for ALA.Plants produce ALA by desaturation of oleic acid, mediated by Omega-3 fatty acid desaturase (FAD), a crucial enzyme that determines ALA content.One of the plants, commonly known as tree peony, has been reported as a key source for ALA with over 45 % of its oil derived from seeds (Qi et al., 2005).Other attributable features like resilience against drought, shade, and poor soil also make tree peony a promising nutritional crop.Recently in Plant Physiology, Zhang et al. ( 2025) examined the complex transcriptional machinery and characterized the role of basic leucine zipper 44 (bZIP44) during ALA biosynthesis in tree peony (Zhang Ling et al., 2025).The work builds on previous studies in which the authors analyzed 60 cultivars of tree peony for their fatty acid properties and discovered that two cultivars, 'Jing Shen Huan Fa' (JSHF) and 'Sai Gui Fei' (SGF), are rich in ALA (Figure 1A) (Li et al., 2015).In the new Plant Physiology paper, the authors analyzed the fatty acid levels during different stages of seed development of the two cultivars.They observed a higher ALA presence in JSHF than SGF, which is rich in linoleic acid, another fatty acid present in seed oil.The differences in their ALA content make both cultivars ideal for investigating the molecular mechanism behind ALA accumulation (Figure 1B).Previous studies reported that the fatty acid desaturase 3 (PsFAD3) is differentially expressed in the two cultivars and could be partially responsible for the observed difference in ALA biosynthesis (Yin et al., 2018).The higher expression of PsFAD3 in JSHF cultivar correlates