Biologically produced wax esters can fulfil different industrial purposes. These functionalities almost drove the sperm whale to extinction from hunting. After the ban on hunting, there is a niche in the global market for biolubricants with properties similar to spermaceti. Wax esters can also serve as a mechanism for producing insect sex pheromone fatty alcohols. Pheromone-based mating disruption strategies are in high demand to replace the toxic pesticides in agriculture and manage insect plagues threatening our food and fiber reserves. In this study we set out to investigate the possibilities of in planta assembly of wax esters, for specific applications, through transient expression of various mix-and-match combinations of genes in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. Our synthetic biology designs were outlined in order to pivot plant lipid metabolism into producing wax esters with targeted fatty acyl and fatty alcohols moieties. Through this approach we managed to obtain industrially important spermaceti-like wax esters enriched in medium-chain fatty acyl and/or fatty alcohol moieties of wax esters. Via employment of plant codon-optimized moth acyl-CoA desaturases we also managed to capture unusual, unsaturated fatty alcohol and fatty acyl moieties, structurally similar to moth pheromone compounds, in plant-accumulated wax esters. Comparison between outcomes of different experimental designs identified targets for stable transformation to accumulate specialized wax esters and helped us to recognize possible bottlenecks of such accumulation.

生物生产的蜡酯可以满足不同的工业用途。这些功能几乎使抹香鲸因捕猎而灭绝。狩猎禁令之后，具有类似于鲸蜡特性的生物润滑剂在全球市场上占有一席之地。蜡酯还可作为产生昆虫性信息素脂肪醇的机制。人们迫切需要基于信息素的交配干扰策略来取代农业中的有毒农药并控制威胁我们食物和纤维储备的昆虫瘟疫。在这项研究中，我们着手通过在本塞姆氏烟草叶子中瞬时表达各种基因的混合搭配组合来研究蜡酯在植物中组装的可能性，以用于特定的应用。我们概述了我们的合成生物学设计，以便将植物脂质代谢转化为生产具有目标脂肪酰基和脂肪醇部分的蜡酯。通过这种方法，我们成功获得了工业上重要的鲸蜡类蜡酯，富含蜡酯的中链脂肪酰基和/或脂肪醇部分。通过使用植物密码子优化的蛾酰辅酶A去饱和酶，我们还成功地在植物积累的蜡酯中捕获了不寻常的不饱和脂肪醇和脂肪酰基部分，其结构与蛾信息素化合物相似。不同实验设计的结果之间的比较确定了稳定转化以积累特殊蜡酯的目标，并帮助我们认识到这种积累可能存在的瓶颈。