Identification of the Fucose Synthetase Gene in the Colanic Acid Gene Cluster of Escherichia coli K-12

GDP-L-fucose, the substrate for fucosyltransferases for addition of fucose to polysaccharides or glycoproteins in both procaryotes and eucaryotes, is made from GDP-D-mannose. L-Fucose is a component of bacterial surface antigens, including the extracellular polysaccharide colanic acid produced by most Escherichia coli strains. We previously sequenced the E. coli colanic acid gene cluster and identified one of the GDP-L-fucose biosynthetic pathway genes, gmd. We report here the identification of the gene (fcl), located downstream of gmd, encoding the fucose synthetase.