| Résumé | The main polar lipid (MPL) of Thermoplasma acidophilum has been purified and its structure determined. NMR, mass spectrometry, and capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry experiments have shown that the previously unidentified sugar moiety of MPL is the rare sugar L-gulose. MPL is thus a tetraether lipid with cyclopentane rings and head groups of phosphoglycerol, as previously reported, and beta-L-gulopyranose. Further, MPL is also the dominant lipid found in lipid extracts from another species of the Thermoplasma genus, T. volcanium, suggesting that L-gulose may represent a dominant sugar moiety of the polar lipids biosynthesized by this archaeobacterial genus. Minor phospholipids were tentatively identified as diether and hydroxydiether analogs of phosphatidylglycerol, and phosphatidylinositol |
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