Functional enrichment analysis has played a key role in the biological interpretation of high-throughput omics data. As a long-standing and widely used web application for functional enrichment analysis, WebGestalt has been constantly updated to satisfy the needs of biologists from different research areas. WebGestalt 2017 supports 12 organisms, 324 gene identifiers from various databases and technology platforms, and 150 937 functional categories from public databases and computational analyses. Omics data with gene identifiers not supported by WebGestalt and functional categories not included in the WebGestalt database can also be uploaded for enrichment analysis. In addition to the Over-Representation Analysis in the previous versions, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis and Network Topology-based Analysis have been added to WebGestalt 2017, providing complementary approaches to the interpretation of high-throughput omics data. The new user-friendly output interface and the GOView tool allow interactive and efficient exploration and comparison of enrichment results. Thus, WebGestalt 2017 enables more comprehensive, powerful, flexible and interactive functional enrichment analysis. It is freely available at http://www.webgestalt.org.

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Diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT) catalyzes the acyl-CoA-dependent acylation of sn-1,2-diacylglycerol to produce triacylglycerol (TAG). This enzyme, which is critical to numerous facets of oilseed development, has been highlighted as a genetic engineering target to increase storage lipid production in microorganisms designed for biofuel applications. Here, four transcriptionally active DGAT1 genes were identified and characterized from the oil crop Brassica napus. Overexpression of each BnaDGAT1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae increased TAG biosynthesis. Further studies showed that adding an N-terminal tag could mask the deleterious influence of the DGATs' native N-terminal sequences, resulting in increased in vivo accumulation of the polypeptides and an increase of up to about 150-fold in in vitro enzyme activity. The levels of TAG and total lipid fatty acids in S. cerevisiae producing the N-terminally tagged BnaDGAT1.b at 72 h were 53 and 28 % higher than those in cultures producing untagged BnaA.DGAT1.b, respectively. These modified DGATs catalyzed the synthesis of up to 453 mg fatty acid/L by this time point. The results will be of benefit in the biochemical analysis of recombinant DGAT1 produced through heterologous expression in yeast and offer a new approach to increase storage lipid content in yeast for industrial applications.