2L. Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Polish Academy of Sciences, 53-114 Wroclaw, ul. Wiegla 12; fax: (48-71) 67-9111.
3To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Submitted August 18, 1997.
The structure of the acidic O-specific polysaccharide of a Gram-negative bacterium, H. alvei strain PCM 1199, was studied by NMR spectroscopy including two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (COSY), total correlation spectroscopy (TOCSY), nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy (NOESY), 1H,13C heteronuclear single-quantum coherence (HSQC), 1H,13C heteronuclear multiple-bond correlation (HMBC), and one-dimensional 1H,31P heteronuclear multiple-quantum coherence (HMQC) experiments. It was found that the polysaccharide contains D-galactose, 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-D-glucose, 4-acetamido-4,6-dideoxy-D-glucose, glycerol, and phosphate in the ratios 1:2:1:1:1, as well as O-acetyl groups in non-stoichiometric amounts. The polysaccharide is similar in structure to teichoic acids of Gram-positive bacteria and has the following structure of the repeating unit:
The O-specific polysaccharide of H. alvei PCM 1199 is structurally related to another teichoic acid-like O-specific polysaccharide of H. alvei PCM 1205 studied by us earlier.
KEY WORDS: lipopolysaccharide, O-antigen, bacterial polysaccharide, structure, glycerol phosphate, NMR spectroscopy, Hafnia alvei.