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Updated: Jul 11, 2025

Separating Bacteria by Capsule Amount Using a Discontinuous Density Gradient
Published on: January 7, 2019
The Acinetobacter baumannii K70 and K9 capsular polysaccharides consist of related K-units linked by the same Wzy
Anastasiya A Kasimova1, Nowshin S Sharar2, Stephanie J Ambrose3
1N. D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences , Moscow, Russia.
Importance:
Bacteriophage show promise for the treatment of Acinetobacter baumannii infections that resist all therapeutically suitable antibiotics. Many tail-spike depolymerases encoded by phage that are able to degrade A. baumannii capsular polysaccharide (CPS) exhibit specificity for the linkage present between K-units that make up CPS polymers. This linkage is formed by a specific Wzy polymerase, and the ability to predict this linkage using sequence-based methods that identify the Wzy at the K locus could assist with the selection of phage for therapy. However, little is known about the specificity of Wzy polymerase enzymes. Here, we describe a Wzy polymerase that can accommodate two different but similar sugars as one of the residues it links and phage depolymerases that can cleave both types of bond that Wzy forms.
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