Structural studies of the O-antigenic polysaccharides of Escherichia coli O3 and the enteroaggregative Escherichia coli strain 17-2.

The polysaccharide part of the lipopolysaccharide isolated from an enteroaggregative Escherichia coli isolated from a young child with diarrhoea in Santiago, Chile (strain 17-2), has been investigated. Sugar and methylation analyses of native and partially degraded polysaccharide together with 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR spectroscopies revealed that the polysaccharide is composed of pentasaccharide repeating units. The structure of the repeating unit of E. coli strain 17-2 O-polysaccharide is: [formula: see text] The structure of the O-polysaccharide from E. coli O3 was shown to be identical to that of E. coli strain 17-2 by sugar and methylation analyses and by 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR spectroscopies.