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Journal of Bacteriology, January 2004, p. 383-392, Vol. 186, No. 2
0021-9193/04/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/JB.186.2.383-392.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Structural and Genetic Characterization of the Shigella boydii Type 13 O Antigen

Lu Feng,^1,2, Sof'ya N. Senchenkova,^3, Jinghua Yang,^1, Alexander S. Shashkov,³ Jiang Tao,¹ Hongjie Guo,¹ Guang Zhao,¹ Yuriy A. Knirel,³ Peter Reeves,⁴ and Lei Wang^1,2*

College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071,¹ Center for Functional Genomic Research, TEDA College, Nankai University, TEDA, Tianjin 300457, People's Republic of China,² N. D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 119991, Russian Federation,³ School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences (G08), University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia⁴

Received 9 June 2003/ Accepted 13 October 2003

Shigella is an important human pathogen. It is generally agreed that Shigella and Escherichia coli constitute a single species; the only exception is Shigella boydii type 13, which is more distantly related to E. coli and other Shigella forms and seems to represent another species. This gives S. boydii type 13 an important status in evolution. O antigen is the polysaccharide part of the lipopolysaccharide in the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria and plays an important role in pathogenicity. The chemical structure and genetic organization of the S. boydii type 13 O antigen were investigated. The O polysaccharide was found to be acid labile owing to the presence of a glycosyl phosphate linkage in the main chain. The structure of the linear pentasaccharide phosphate repeating unit (O unit) was established by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, including two-dimensional COSY, TOCSY, ROESY, and H-detected ¹H,¹³C and ¹H,³¹P HMQC experiments, along with chemical methods. The O antigen gene cluster of S. boydii type 13 was located and sequenced. Genes for synthesis of UDP-2-acetamido-2,6-dideoxy-L-glucose and genes that encode putative sugar transferases, O unit flippase, and O antigen polymerase were identified. Seven genes were found to be specific to S. boydii type 13. The S. boydii type 13 O antigen gene cluster has higher levels of sequence similarity with Vibrio cholerae gene clusters and may be evolutionarily related to these gene clusters.

L.F., S.N.S., and J.Y. contributed equally to this report.

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