The lipooligosaccharides of Haemophilus ducreyi are highly sialylated

The major lipooligosaccharides of the sexually transmitted pathogen Haemophilus ducreyi 35000 have been previously found to terminate in N-acetyllactosamine and sialyl-N-acetyllactosamine, Neu5Ac alpha 2-->3Gal beta 1-->4GlcNAc (W. Melaugh, N. J. Phillips, A. A. Campagnari, M. V. Tullius, and B. W. Gibson, Biochemistry 33: 13070-13078, 1994). In this study, mass spectrometry and composition analyses have shown that the lipooligosaccharides from three other H. ducreyi strains also contain N-acetyllactosamine and are highly sialylated (approximately 30 to 50%), although one African strain was found to contain neither of these structural features.