The main polar lipid (MPL) of Thermoplasma acidophilum has been purified and its structure determined. NMR, mass spectrometry, and capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry experiments have shown that the previously unidentified sugar moiety of MPL is the rare sugar L-gulose. MPL is thus a tetraether lipid with cyclopentane rings and head groups of phosphoglycerol, as previously reported, and β-L-gulopyranose. Further, MPL is also the dominant lipid found in lipid extracts from another species of the Thermoplasma genus, T. volcanium, suggesting that L-gulose may represent a dominant sugar moiety of the polar lipids biosynthesized by this archaeobacterial genus. Minor phospholipids were tentatively identified as diether and hydroxydiether analogs of phosphatidylglycerol, and phosphatidylinositol.
structure, lipid, sugar, gulose, main polar lipid, b-L-gulose, Thermoplasma acidophilum, Thermoplasma, tetraether lipid
NCBI PubMed ID: 9084501Publication DOI: 10.1016/s0005-2760(96)00163-4Journal NLM ID: 0217513Publisher: Elsevier
Correspondence: dennis.sprott@nrc.ca
Institutions: Institute for Biological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, 100 Sussex DriÍe, Ottawa, Ont. K1A 0R6 Canada
Methods: 13C NMR, 1H NMR, NMR-2D, GC-MS, sugar analysis, TLC, ESI-MS, NMR-1D, extraction, CD
Found