Resistance of Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP) to antibiotics has motivated the development of an efficacious KP human vaccine that would not be subject to antibiotic resistance. Klebsiella lipopolysaccharide (LPS) associated O polysaccharide (OPS) types have provoked broad interest as a vaccine antigen as there are only 4 that predominate worldwide (O1, O2a, O3, O5). Klebsiella O1 and O2 OPS are polygalactans that share a common D-Gal-I structure, for which a variant D-Gal-III was recently discovered. To understand the potential impact of this variability on antigenicity, a detailed molecular picture of the conformational differences associated with the addition of the D-Gal-III (1?4)Gal branch is presented using enhanced-sampling molecular dynamics simulations. In D-Gal-I two major conformational states are observed while the presence of the 1?4 branch in D-Gal-III resulted in only a single dominant extended state. Stabilization of the more folded states in D-Gal-I is due to a O4-H…O2 hydrogen bond in the linear backbone that cannot occur in D-Gal-III as the O4 is in the Galp(1?4)Galp glycosidic linkage. The impact of branching in D-Gal-III also significantly decreases the accessibility of the monosaccharides in the linear backbone region of D-Gal-I, while the accessibility of the terminal D-Gal-II region of the OPS is not substantially altered. The present results suggest that a vaccine that targets both the D-Gal-I and D-Gal-III LPS can be developed by using D-Gal-III as the antigen combined with cross-reactivity experiments using the Gal-II polysaccharide to assure that this region of the LPS is the primary epitope of the antigen.

Impact of branching on the conformational heterogeneity of the lipopolysaccharide from Klebsiella pneumoniae: Implications for vaccine design