Surface Polysaccharide Extraction and Quantification

Surface Polysaccharide Extraction and Quantification

Blog Article

Gram-negative bacterial cells possess two membranes - the inner cytoplasmic membrane and the outer membrane.The two membranes are distinct in their composition; the inner membrane is composed of a phospholipid bilayer, whereas the outer membrane (OM) is composed of an asymmetrical bilayer, with C EXTRA + QUERCETIN the outer leaflet containing lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (Raetz and Whitfield, 2002).Surface polysaccharides, such as LPS O-antigen, or capsular polysaccharide, are often tightly associated with the OM (Whitfield, 2006).

This tight association can be used to generate a rough quantification Kids Bag of surface polysaccharides of Gram-negative bacterial cells, as the OM can easily be dissociated from cells without associated cell lysis (Brimacombe et al., 2013).The following method describes how to quickly extract and quantify OM-associated polysaccharides.