TITLE:
Carbohydrate analysis by methanolysis method and application to compositional analysis of transparent exopolymer particles
AUTHORS:
Shigeki Wada, Kazuo Iseki, Takeo Hama
KEYWORDS:
Uronic Acid; Transparent Exopolymer Particles; Methanolysis; Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology,
Vol.4 No.9A,
September
11,
2013
ABSTRACT: Measurement of
uronic acids (URAs) which are a group of acidic sugar, would be useful
for the understanding of dynamics of bacterial extracellular polymeric
substances (EPS) in marine environments. However, the URA analysis using
traditional hydrolysis method which is used for neutral sugar analysis poses
serious problems in URA that is unstable under hydrolysis. We developed the methanolysis
method, which deploymerizes polysaccharides while retaining quantitative
information. Our method was applied to coastal seawater, and the URAs distribution
was compared with that of transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) which are
acidic sugar containing particles. Since the relationship of URA with TEP was
relatively weak, URA-containing polysaccharides present in bacterial EPS would
not participate as a structural component of TEP.