Isolated nucleic acids and proteins associated with lipid and sugar metabolism regulation are provided. In particular, the present invention provides lipid metabolism proteins (LMP) and encoding nucleic acids originating from Helianthus annuns. The sunflower LMP nucleic acids and proteins are used in methods of producing transgenic plants and modulating levels of total fatty acids in seeds of the transgenic plants transformed with an expression cassette designed to express the sunflower LMP.