Plant lipids have versatile applications and provide essential fatty acids in human diet. Therefore, there has been a growing interest to better characterize the genetic basis, regulatory networks, and metabolic pathways that shape lipid quantity and composition. Addressing these issues is challenging due to context-specificity of lipid metabolism integrating environmental, developmental, and tissue-specific cues. Here we systematically review the known metabolic pathways and regulatory interactions that modulate the levels of storage lipids in oilseeds. We argue that the current understanding of lipid metabolism provides the basis for its study in the context of genome-wide plant metabolic networks with the help of approaches from constraint-based modeling and metabolic flux analysis. The focus is on providing a comprehensive summary of the state-of-the-art of modeling plant lipid metabolic pathways, which we then contrast with the existing modeling efforts in yeast and microalgae. We then point out the gaps in knowledge of lipid metabolism, and enumerate the recent advances of using genome-wide association and quantitative trait loci mapping studies to unravel the genetic regulations of lipid metabolism. Finally, we offer a perspective on how advances in the constraint-based modeling framework can propel further characterization of plant lipid metabolism and its rational manipulation.

植物脂质具有多种用途，可在人类饮食中提供必需脂肪酸。因此，人们越来越有兴趣更好地表征影响脂质数量和组成的遗传基础、调节网络和代谢途径。由于脂质代谢的环境特异性整合了环境、发育和组织特异性线索，因此解决这些问题具有挑战性。在这里，我们系统地回顾了调节油籽中储存脂质水平的已知代谢途径和调节相互作用。我们认为，在基于约束的建模和代谢通量分析方法的帮助下，目前对脂质代谢的理解为其在全基因组植物代谢网络的背景下的研究提供了基础。重点是提供对植物脂质代谢途径建模的最新技术的全面总结，然后我们将其与酵母和微藻中现有的建模工作进行对比。然后，我们指出了脂质代谢知识的差距，并列举了使用全基因组关联和数量性状基因座作图研究来揭示脂质代谢的遗传规律的最新进展。最后，我们提供了一个观点，即基于约束的建模框架的进步如何推动植物脂质代谢的进一步表征及其合理操作。并列举使用全基因组关联和数量性状位点作图研究来揭示脂质代谢的遗传调控的最新进展。最后，我们提供了一个观点，即基于约束的建模框架的进步如何推动植物脂质代谢的进一步表征及其合理操作。并列举使用全基因组关联和数量性状位点作图研究来揭示脂质代谢的遗传调控的最新进展。最后，我们提供了一个观点，即基于约束的建模框架的进步如何推动植物脂质代谢的进一步表征及其合理操作。