Biosynthesis of O-antigen

Jann K, Jann B (1984) Structure and biosynthesis of O-antigens. In Rietschel ET (ed) Handbook of endotoxin Vol 1 Chemistry of endotoxin. Elsevier, Amsterdam, p 138... 

Marolda, C.L., Vicarioli, J., Valvano, M.A. Wzx proteins involved in biosynthesis of O antigen function in association with the first sugar of the O-specific lipopolysaccharide subunit. Microbiology 150 (2004) 4095 1105. 

Reeves, P.R., Cunneen, M.M. Biosynthesis of O-antigen chains and assembly. In Moran, A., Brennan, P., Holst, O., Itzstein, M.v. (eds), Microbial Glycobiology Structures, Relevance and Applications, Academic, New York, NY (2009). 

The biosynthesis of other O-specific polysaccharides has still not been investigated. The only additional example of demonstration of such a process is in the formation of (l->3)-a-D-galactan, the Ol antigen of Klebsiella.333 UDP-Gal was identified as the glycosyl donor in the reaction, but further details of the mechanism remain unclear. 

V Shibaev Biosynthesis of salmonella O-antigenic polysaccharide specificity of glycosyl transferases... 

In 1967, two possible general mechanisms for the biosynthesis of linear polysaccharides were proposed.86 The first was the primer mechanism already discussed, and the second was the sequential addition of monomer units to the reducing end by the insertion between a carrier and the growing polysaccharide chain. This latter mechanism had been shown for Salmonella sp. O-antigenic polysaccharide87 then in 1973, it was shown for the bacterial cell-wall polysaccharide murein88 in which the carrier was a polyisoprenoid pyrophosphate. 

Kondakova, A.N., Ho, N., Bystrova, O.V., Shashkov, A.S., Lindner, B., Creuzenet, C., Knirel, Y.A. Structural studies of the O-antigens of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis 0 2a and mutants thereof with impaired 6-deoxy-D-manno-heptose biosynthesis pathway. Carbohydr Res 343 (2008b) 1383-1389. 

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