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. 1996 Feb 1;313(Pt 3):963–971. doi: 10.1042/bj3130963

Structural studies on a lipoarabinogalactan of Crithidia fasciculata.

P Schneider 1, A Treumann 1, K G Milne 1, M J McConville 1, N Zitzmann 1, M A Ferguson 1
PMCID: PMC1217005  PMID: 8611182

Abstract

The monosaccharide D-arabinopyranose has only been found in glycoconjugates of the trypanasomatid parasites Leishmania major, Endotrypanum schaudinni and Crithidia fasciculata. The donor molecule for the relevant arabinosyltransferases is known to be GDP-alpha-D-Arap in L. major and C. fasciculata, and the latter organism is being used to study the biosynthesis of GDP-alpha-D-Arap. In this study, we describe the structure of the terminal product of arabinose metabolism in C. fasciculata, namely lipoarabinogalactan. This molecule was purified by hydrophobic-interaction chromatography and studied by a variety of techniques, including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, electrospray mass spectrometry and chemical and enzymic digestions. These data show that lipoarabinogalactan contains a previously described D-arabino-D-galactan polysaccharide component covalently attached to a glycosylphosphatidylinositol type of membrane anchor that is similar to, but not identical with, that found in the lipophosphoglycans of the Leishmania.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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