A variant of a Mycobacterium sp. originating in a patient with Crohn's disease, but not necessarily implicated in the disease, provided a simple version of a newer class of species-specific surface glycolipids, the trehalose-containing lipooligosaccharides. A combination of high-resolution 1H nuclear magnetic resonance, methylation, ethylation, and absolute configurational analysis established the structure of the oligosaccharide unit as beta-D-Glcp(1----3)-alpha-L-Rhap(1----3)-alpha-D-Glcp(1----1)-alph a-D-Glcp (where Glc is glucose, Rha is rhamnose, and p is pyranosyl), and gas chromatography-electron impact mass spectrometry allowed identification of the fatty acyl esters as primarily 2,4-dimethyltetradecanoate. The relative simplicity of the glycolipid combined with the application of a mild methylation procedure and californium-252 plasma desorption mass spectrometry allowed recognition of three such acyl residues on the 3-, 4-, and 6-hydroxyl positions of the terminal glucosyl residue of the trehalose unit. Thus, the glycolipid is decidedly amphipathic yet is clearly not membranous. This observation leads to speculation about the role of these novel lipooligosaccharides in contributing to the outer segment of the hydrophobic barrier of the cell wall of certain mycobacteria.
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