Properties of an Extracellular Polysaccharide Produced by a Strain of Enterobacter Isolated from Pond Water

Abstract

A bacterium which was isolated from pond water and identified as Enterobacter cloacae produced a viscous extracellular polysaccharide when it was grown aerobically in a medium containing sucrose as a sole source of carbon. The maximum molecular weight of the polysaccharide was about 9.0×10⁵. The polysaccharide was composed of fucose, galactose, glucose, and glucuronic acid in a molar ratio of 2:3:2:1, but the molecular weight and the molar ratio of the sugar component were different from those of the polysaccharide produced by the same species reported elsewhere.