Studies have shown the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in clinical infections, suggesting the need for new antibiotics. Bacterial glycans are attractive antibiotic targets due to the highly divergent structures observed across bacterial species and their involvement in pathogenesis. Here, we turned to metabolic oligosaccharide engineering as a tool to probe the presence of rare, exclusively bacterial monosaccharaides on the pathogenic bacteria Plesiomonas shigelloides and Vibrio vulnificus. In particular, we assessed the metabolic incorporation of peracetylated versus free N-azidoacetyl analogs of L-pneumosamine and L-rhamnosamine. Incorporation of the azidosugar probes into cellular glycans was assayed on live cells through flow cytometry and in cell lysates by western blot analysis. Both species preferentially incorporated the peracetylated probes, with strong incorporation onto cell surface glycans. These studies reveal insight into optimal design parameters of metabolic probes to study glycans in these bacteria.

Metabolic labeling of pathogenic bacteria Pleisiomonas shigelloides and Vibrio vulnificus with peracetylated and free azido analogs of rare L-sugars

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