The study of the core part and non-repeating elements of the O-antigen of Brucella lipopolysaccharide.

Brucella is an animal and human pathogen that expresses several virulence factors required for host cell invasion and intracellular survival. It produces LPS with unusually low toxicity, which hampers the detection of bacteria by the host immune system and thus provides resistance against intracellular antimicrobial mechanisms of the host. By chemical and spectroscopic methods we determined the structure of the LPS core and of a non-repetitive oligosaccharide fragment at the reducing end of the O-specific polysaccharide. These data should be useful for understanding the biological role of the Brucella LPS.