Bacterial Extracellular Polysaccharides

Authors: Kateryna Bazaka Russell J Crawford Evgeny L Nazarenko Elena P Ivanova

Publish Date: 2011

Volume: , Issue: , Pages: 213-226

PDF Link

Abstract

Extracellular polysaccharides are as structurally and functionally diverse as the bacteria that synthesise them They can be present in many forms including cellbound capsular polysaccharides unbound “slime” and as Oantigen component of lipopolysaccharide with an equally wide range of biological functions These include resistance to desiccation protection against nonspecific and specific host immunity and adherence Unsurprisingly then much effort has been made to catalogue the enormous structural complexity of the extracellular polysaccharides made possible by the wide assortment of available monosaccharide combinations noncarbohydrate residues and linkage types and to elucidate their biosynthesis and export In addition the work is driven by the commercial potential of these microbial substances in food pharmaceutics and biomedical industries Most recently bacteriamediated environmental restoration and bioleaching have been attracting much attention owing to their potential to remediate environmental effluents produced by the mining and metallurgy industries In spite of technological advances in chemistry molecular biology and imaging techniques that allowed for considerable expansion of knowledge pertaining to the bacterial surface polysaccharides current understanding of the mechanisms of synthesis and regulation of extracellular polysaccharides is yet to fully explain their structural intricacy and functional variability

Keywords: