Bacterial Polysaccharides antigenic properties

The numerous examples of regular complex copolysaccharides often involve familiar-looking material for cellulose chemists. Figure 10 shows two pneumococcal polysaccharides. Types III and VIII, also known as "specific soluble substance", which in the 1920 s and early 1930 s were shown to be antigenic although they were free of nitrogen and did not possess any of the properties of peptides. The knowledge achieved by the extensive studies on cellulose and carbohydrates in the first decades of this century was responsible for the early establishment of the chemical structures of Types III and VIII. The revolutionary work on bacterial transformation, in which Avery, MacLeod and McCarty in 1944 identified DNA as the... 

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