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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 282, Issue 11, 7790-7798, March 16, 2007

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Modification of Lipopolysaccharide with Colanic Acid (M-antigen) Repeats in Escherichia coli^*

Timothy C. Meredith, Uwe Mamat, Zbigniew Kaczynski^¶, Buko Lindner^||, Otto Holst, and Ronald W. Woodard¹

From the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, the Division of Structural Biochemistry and ^||Division of Immunochemistry, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Center for Medicine and Biosciences, D-23845 Borstel, Germany, and the ^¶Faculty of Chemistry, University of Gdansk, Pl-80952 Gdansk, Poland

Colanic acid (CA) or M-antigen is an exopolysaccharide produced by many enterobacteria, including the majority of Escherichia coli strains. Unlike other capsular polysaccharides, which have a close association with the bacterial surface, CA forms a loosely associated saccharide mesh that coats the bacteria, often within biofilms. Herein we show that a highly mucoid strain of E. coli K-12 ligates CA repeats to a significant proportion of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) core acceptor molecules, forming the novel LPS glycoform we call M_LPS.M_LPS biosynthesis is dependent upon (i) CA induction, (ii) LPS core biosynthesis, and (iii) the O-antigen ligase WaaL. Compositional analysis, mass spectrometry, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of a purified M_LPS sample confirmed the presence of a CA repeat unit identical in carbohydrate sequence, but differing at multiple positions in anomeric configuration and linkage, from published structures of extracellular CA. The attachment point was identified as O-7 of the L-glycero-D-manno-heptose of the outer LPS core, the same position used for O-antigen ligation. When O-antigen biosynthesis was restored in the K-12 background and grown under conditions meeting the above specifications, only M_LPS was observed, suggesting E. coli can reversibly change its proximal covalently linked cell surface polysaccharide coat from O-antigen to CA in response to certain environmental stimuli. The identification of M_LPS has implications for potential underlying mechanisms coordinating the synthesis of various surface polysaccharides.

Received for publication, November 30, 2006 , and in revised form, January 4, 2007.

^* This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant R01 AI61531 (to R. W. W.). The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Tables S1–S4.

¹ To whom correspondence should be addressed: College of Pharmacy, 428 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1065. Tel.: 734-764-7366; Fax: 734-763-2022; E-mail: rww{at}umich.edu.

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