Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is a major virulence
determinant of Haemophilus influenzae. The
organism is capable of expressing a heterogeneous population of LPS
which exhibits extensive antigenic
diversity among multiple oligosaccharide (OS) epitopes. Structural
elucidation of variable and conserved
OS epitopes of H. influenzae serotype b strain Eagan was
determined by the application of high-field
NMR techniques and MS-based methods on oligosaccharides obtained from
LPS samples by a deacylation
strategy. LPS extracted by the hot aqueous phenol method gave
complex electrophoretic patterns consisting
of at least six low-molecular mass bands. Electrospray
ionization−mass spectrometry of O-deacylated
LPS revealed a series of related structures differing in the number of
hexose residues as well as
subpopulations of glycoforms containing additional phosphoethanolamine
(PEA) groups. It was
demonstrated that the LPS contains a conserved PEA-substituted,
heptose-containing trisaccharide inner
core moiety attached via a KDO 4-phosphate unit to a lipid A
component. Tandem MS experiments
unambiguously established the presence of a KDO
4-pyrophosphoethanolamine unit in the subpopulation
of LPS containing additional PEA groups. The occurrence of LPS
containing this structural feature was
found to be dependant on the isolation procedure used. Each
heptose of the common inner core element
l-α-d-Hepp(1→2)-l-α-d-Hepp(1→3)-l-α-d-Hepp(1→5)-α-KDO
is substituted by a hexose residue with
further chain elongation from the central unit. The structures of
the major glycoforms containing four
(three Glcs and one Gal), five (three Glcs and two Gals), and six
(three Glcs and three Gals) hexoses
were determined in detail. The Hex6 glycoform contains the
terminal structure,
α-d-Galp(1→4)-β-d-Galp(1→4)-β-d-Glc, providing, for the first
time, definitive structural evidence for the expression of
the
Pk-blood group antigen in H. influenzae LPS.
Moreover, an analogue of the Hex4 glycoform was
identified
in which the third heptose residue carries phosphate at
O-4.
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