A route to oligosaccharide-appended salicylaldehydes: useful building blocks for the synthesis of metal-salophen complexes.

A simple and general synthetic protocol to obtain oligosaccharide-appended salicylaldehydes, key intermediates for the synthesis of water-soluble metal-salophen complexes, is here reported. Six new aldehydes have been prepared and fully characterized as well as the corresponding zinc- and uranyl-salophen complexes. These new derivatives show very good solubility in water. Preliminary studies on the association of compound 19-U, that is, the uranyl maltotetraose derivative, with hydrogen phosphate and fluoride provide very encouraging results and open up the possibility of using such compounds for the efficient recognition of anions in pure water.

Rhizobium rubi(T): a gram-negative phytopathogenic bacterium expressing the Lewis B epitope on the outer core of its lipooligosaccharide fraction.

The structure of the core oligosaccharide from the phytopathogenic bacterium Rhizobium rubi was deduced by combining information from complementary chemical approaches (alkaline and acid hydrolysis), similar to the "overlap peptide" strategy. This structure is new and it contains two main oligosaccharide backbones that differ in the substitution degree of the external Kdo unit. The relevant feature shared by both oligosaccharides is the presence of a tetrasaccharide motif that is similar to the blood group Lewis B antigen (Le(B)). This epitope differs from Le(B) in the glycosidic configuration of the glucosamine unit (alpha and not beta) and in the occurrence of acetyls substituents at O3 and/or O4 of the galactose moiety. Other notable structural features are the location of the Dha residue, the presence of a alpha-glucose unit that is linked to the inner Kdo unit, the high number of acid sugars and the highly branched core structure.