Escherichia coli includes clonal groups of both commensal and pathogenic strains, with some of the latter causing serious infectious diseases. O antigen variation is current standard in defining strains for taxonomy and epidemiology, providing the basis for many serotyping schemes for Gram-negative bacteria. This review covers the diversity in E. coli O antigen structures and gene clusters, and the genetic basis for the structural diversity. Of the 187 formally defined O antigens, six (O31, O47, O67, O72, O94 and O122) have since been removed and four (O14, O34, O89 and O144) strains do not produce any O antigen. Therefore, structures are presented for 176 of the 181 E. coli O antigens, some of which include subgroups. Most (93%) of these O antigens are synthesized via the Wzx/Wzy pathway, 11 via the ABC transporter pathway, with O20, O57 and O60 still uncharacterized due to failure to find their O antigen gene clusters. Biosynthetic pathways are given for 38 of the 49 sugars found in E. coli O antigens, and several pairs or groups of the E. coli antigens that have related structures show close relationships of the O antigen gene clusters within clades, thereby highlighting the genetic basis of the evolution of diversity.
structure, O antigen, Escherichia coli, gene cluster, serogroup, diversity
NCBI PubMed ID: 31778182Publication DOI: 10.1093/femsre/fuz028Journal NLM ID: 8902526Publisher: Oxford University Press
Correspondence: G. Widmalm
; Lei Wang
Institutions: Department of Organic Chemistry, Arrhenius Laboratory, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Microbial Functional Genomics, Tianjin, China, The Key Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Technology, Ministry of Education, Tianjin, China, School of Molecular and Microbial Bioscience (G08), University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, TEDA Institute of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Nankai University, TEDA, Tianjin, China, Department of Immunology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
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