Antibodies raised against purified rapeseed 19 kDa oleosin protein were used to screen an embryo-derived lambda-gt11 expression library from Brassica napus. A near full-length cDNA clone, BnV, was isolated. The 781 bp cDNA contained an open reading frame of 549 bp followed by an untranslated region of 222 bp and a poly(A) region of 10 bp. Comparisons between this cDNA and a different oleosin cDNA previously isolated from the same library showed high degrees of sequence similarity in the central domain region and in the 3' untranslated region. Sequence similarities between the derived protein sequence of this cDNA and all other known oleosin protein sequences are discussed.