On the structure of the Escherichia coli C cell wall lipopolysaccharide core and on its øX174 receptor region

Mutants of Escherichia coli C were selected for resistance towards a set of cell wall LPS core specific bacteriophages, including øX174. Increasingly deficient LPS's from wt and mutant E. coli C were tested for inactivation of øX174, and the core oligosaccharides were subjected to structural analysis by methylation/g.l.c./m.s. Loss of the terminal galactose in the following basic structure of the E. coli C wt core was found to lead to adsorption resistance towards øX174: