Isolation and study of the chemical structure of a disaccharide from Micrococcus lysodeikticus cell walls.

A large scale isolation of a disaccharide from a dialyzable fraction cf Micrococcus Zysodeikticus cell wall is described. This fraction was obtained by degradation of isolated walls with egg white lysozyme. After purification by chromatography on charcoal-Celite 2nd Dowex 1, the compound was characterized by a crystalline heptaacetyl methyl ester. Comparison with synthetic 0-2-acetamido-2-deoxy-O-Dglucopyranosyl-(l-6)-2-acetamido-3 -O-(o-l-carboxyethyl)2-deoxy-D-glucose and with synthetic 2-acetamido-1,4-di-Oacetyl-2-deoxy-3-0-[n-1-(methyl carboxylate)ethyl]-6-0-(2acetamido-3,4,6-tri-O-acetyl-2-deoxy-P-~-glucopyranosyl)cY-n-glucopyranose, respectively, showed these compounds to be not identical, and a (l-4) linkage is proposed for the natural disaccharide.