Structural and molecular characterization of Shigella boydii type 16 O antigen

Shigella is a well-known human pathogen causing dysentery and their typing is solely based on the O antigens. We investigated the chemical structure and gene cluster of Shigella boydii type 16 O antigen. As judged by sugar and methylation analyses along with NMR spectroscopy data, the O antigen has an O-acetylated branched pentasaccharide repeating O unit, which consists of two d-mannose residues (d-Man), one residue each of d-glucuronic acid (d-GlcA), N-acetylglucosamine (d-GlcNAc) and d-galactose (d-Gal), and the structure of the O unit was established. The O antigen gene cluster of S. boydii type 16 was identified and shown to contain putative genes for the synthesis of GDP-d-Man, genes encoding sugar transferases, O unit flippase (Wzx) and O antigen polymerase (Wzy) as expected. The function of the wzy gene was characterized by mutation test. Genes specific to S. boydii type 16 O antigen gene cluster were identified by screening 186 Escherichia coli and Shigella type strains, and can be used to develop PCR assays for detection of type 16 strains.