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A group of Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica O antigens sharing a common backbone structure

Wei Wang^1,2,

Andrei V. Perepelov^3,

Lu Feng^1,2,

¹ TEDA School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Nankai University, 23 Hongda Street, TEDA, Tianjin 300457, P. R. China
² Tianjin Key Laboratory of Microbial Functional Genomics, Nankai University, 23 Hongda Street, TEDA, Tianjin 300457, P. R. China
³ N. D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119991 Moscow, Russian Federation
⁴ School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences (G08), University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Correspondence
Lei Wang
wanglei{at}nankai.edu.cn

The O-antigen moiety of the LPS is one of the most variable cell surface components of the Gram-negative bacterial outer membrane. Variation is due to the presence of different sugars and sugar linkages. Here, it is reported that a group of Escherichia coli O serogroups (O17, O44, O73, O77 and O106), and the Salmonella enterica serogroup O : 6,14 (H), share a common four-sugar backbone O-subunit structure, and possess almost identical O-antigen gene clusters. Whereas the E. coli O77 antigen does not have any substitutions, the other O antigens in this group differ by the addition of one or two glucose side branches at various positions of the backbone. The O-antigen gene clusters for all members of the group encode only the proteins required for biosynthesis of the common four-sugar backbone. The identification of three genes within a putative prophage in the E. coli O44 genome is also reported; these genes are presumably involved in the glucosylation of the basic tetrasaccharide unit. This was confirmed by deletion of one of the genes, which encodes a putative glucosyltransferase. Structural analysis of the O antigen produced by the mutant strain demonstrated the absence of glucosylation. An O-antigen structure shared by five E. coli and one S. enterica serogroups, all of which have a long evolutionary history, suggests that the common backbone may be important for the survival of E. coli strains in the environment, or for their pathogenicity.

These authors contributed equally to this paper.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the sequences of E. coli O73, O77 and O106 O-antigen gene clusters are DQ000313, DQ000314 and DQ000315, respectively.

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