Role of phosphatidylethanolamine in the biosynthesis of pyrophosphoethanolamine residues in the lipopolysaccharide of Escherichia coli.

The biosynthesis of pyrophosphoethanolamine residues linked to the core oligosaccharide region of the lipopolysaccharide of Escherichia coli K2 strain BB 26-36 has been investigated by means of isotope tracer experiments in living cells. Phosphoethanolamine was isolated from the pyrophosphoethanolamine residues after hydrolysis in 1 N HCl at 100 degrees C. The kinetics of labeling of the phosphoethanolamine from [3H]serine or sn-glycero-3-32P during pulse-chase experiments revealed that the biosynthetic precursor of the phosphoethanolamine must be a large, relatively stable pool, and not a small, rapidly metabolized pool such as that of free serine, or seryl-tRNA. Labeling of the pyrophosphoethanolamine residues of the lipopolysaccharide from the two isotopes was closely parallel, and the isotope ratio 3H/32P was closely similar to that in phosphatidylethanolamine at the same time intervals. These experiments offer strong evidence that phosphatidylethanolamine functions in the biosynthesis of pyrophosphoethanolamine residues in lipopolysaccharide in a reaction in which the phosphoethanolamine head-group of the phospholipid is transferred as a unit to a lipopolysaccharide acceptor.