Identification of N-acetylglucosamine and 4-O-[1-carboxyethyl]mannose in the exopolysaccharide from Cyanospira capsulata

✍ Scribed by Domenico Garozzo; Giuseppe Impallomeni; Emanuela Spina; Luisa Sturiale; Attilio Cesàro; Paola Cescutti

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 465 KB
• Volume: 270
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-6215
• DOI: 10.1016/0008-6215(95)98597-v

✦ Synopsis

Cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae, are autotrophic prokaryotes; they are widespread in the environment and are capable of producing cell wall and extracellular polysaccharides. These materials possess industrially interesting solution properties [1] and their structures are relevant to our understanding of the microbial physiology and antigenicity. A new genus named Cyanospira has recently been isolated from the alkaline soda lake Magadi in Kenya [2,3]. Two species have been described: Cyanospira rippkae and Cyanospira capsulata. The latter takes its name from the gelatinous capsule that surrounds the microorganism cells that are arranged in colonies of helical thricomes.

An exopolysaccharide has been isolated [2,3] from cultures of Cyanospira capsulata (CC-EPS), and this has been reported [3,4] to be composed of arabinose, fucose, glucose, mannose and galacturonic acid (GalA). Two other papers [5,6] have appeared dealing with the primary structure of CC-EPS. The structures proposed differ in the quantitative estimate of GalA. In Ref. [5], all five monosaccharides are reported to be present in equimolar ratio, whilst in Refs [4] and [6] GalA is reported to be present in a 2:1 ratio with respect to the other neutral sugars. This difference was explained by * Corresponding author.