Mycolyl arabinogalactan

FIGURE 14.6 Structure of mycobacterial mycolyl arabinogalactan-peptidoglycan complex. Ara, arabinose MurNGc, iV-glycolylmuramic acid. 

The basic structure of the mycobacterial cell wall is shown in O Fig. 1 (O Sect. 1). The major component of the cell wall is the mycolyl-arabinogalactan-peptidoglycan (mAGP) complex [21]. This consists of an inner peptidoglycan layer attached through a linker unit to an ara-binogalactan polysaccharide, which is in turn esterified to mycolic acids. The mycolic acids are branched hydroxy fatty acids that form the inner leaflet of the lipid bilayer. The outer leaflet... 

Figure 16. A chemical model of the mycobacterial cell wall. The two major components are the mycolyl arabinogalactan-peptidoglycan complex and the lipoarabinomannan/lipomannan. The amount and exact chemical nature of the surface glycolipids are species- and/or strain-specific.

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