As described recently (Janse et al. 1999; Limnol Oceanogr 44(6):1447–1457), mucopolysaccharides of the marine microalga Phaeocystis can be degraded in enrichment cultures. In this paper we report on the characterization of the microbial community in such enrichments. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) profiles that were obtained during mucopolysaccharide degradation showed a substan...

Formation of a normal fibrous repair tissue requires ascorbic acid, for in the absence of this vitamin a tissue proliferates lacking the fibrillar elements which contribute to tensile strength (1). Chemical analyses have shown that the massive repair tissue induced by the subcutaneous injection of a foreign body, the galactan carrageenan, contained very little collagen when the animals received...

Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron can utilize a variety of polysaccharides, including charged mucopolysaccharides such as chondroitin sulfate (CS) and hyaluronic acid (HA). Since the enzymes (chondroitin lyases I and II) that catalyze the first step in breakdown of CS and HA are located in the periplasm, we had proposed that the first step in utilization of these polysaccharides was binding to one o...

Quantitative measurements have been made of the interaction of human complement subcomponent C l q with mucopolysaccharides. The binding of Clq to heparin was quantitatively examined by utilizing an assay that employs a ‘‘%labeled low molecular weight heparin glycosaminoglycan (LMW-Hep) (Mr = 8500). Two classes of binding sites were detected. The first class of sites bound 2.02 mol of LMW-Hep/m...