title: Structural and molecular characterization of Shigella boydii type 16 O antigen.
abstract: Shigella is a well-known human pathogen causing dysentery and their typing is solely based on the O antigens. We investigated the chemical structure and gene cluster of Shigella boydii type 16 O antigen. As judged by sugar and methylation analyses along with NMR spectroscopy data, the O antigen has an O-acetylated branched pentasaccharide repeating O unit, which consists of two D-mannose residues (D-Man), one residue each of d-glucuronic acid (D-GlcA), N-acetylglucosamine (D-GlcNAc) and D-galactose (D-Gal), and the structure of the O unit was established. The O antigen gene cluster of S. boydii type 16 was identified and shown to contain putative genes for the synthesis of GDP-D-Man, genes encoding sugar transferases, O unit flippase (Wzx) and O antigen polymerase (Wzy) as expected. The function of the wzy gene was characterized by mutation test. Genes specific to S. boydii type 16 O antigen gene cluster were identified by screening 186 Escherichia coli and Shigella type strains, and can be used to develop PCR assays for detection of type 16 strains.
authors.affiliation: TEDA School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Nankai University, 23# HongDa Street, TEDA, Tianjin 300457, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Sof'ya N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Senchenkova
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.forename: Andrei V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Perepelov
authors.forename: Tianzheng
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Sergei D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Shevelev
authors.forename: Yajuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Alexander S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Shashkov
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.forename: Yuriy A
authors.initials: YA
authors.lastname: Knirel
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000235:genetics; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family; D019081:O Antigens / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D009844:Oligosaccharides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012761:Shigella boydii / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000472:pathogenicity
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers; D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D019081:O Antigens; D009844:Oligosaccharides