Isolation and Preparation of Bacterial Cell Walls for Compositional Analysis by Ultra Performance Liquid ChromatographySamantha M. Desmarais 1, Felipe Cava 2, Miguel A. de Pedro 3, Kerwyn Casey Huang 1,4
1Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, 2Department of Molecular Biology and Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden, Umeå Centre for Microbial Research, Umeå University, 3Campus de Cantoblanco, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 4Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine
The bacterial cell wall is composed of peptidoglycan, a macromolecular network of sugar strands crosslinked by peptides. Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography provides high resolution and throughput for novel discoveries of peptidoglycan composition. We present a procedure for the isolation of cell walls (sacculi) and their subsequent preparation for analysis via UPLC.