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This Article Full Text (Papers in Press[PDF]) All Versions of this Article: jmm.0.009936-0v1 58/8/1015    most recent Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Google Scholar Articles by Alhawi, M. Articles by Poxton, I. R PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Alhawi, M. Articles by Poxton, I. R Agricola Articles by Alhawi, M. Articles by Poxton, I. R

Bacteroides fragilis signals through TLR2 and not TLR4

¹ King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia;

² University of Edinburgh;

³ Univesity of Leicester;

⁴ Queen's University Belfast

⁵ E-mail: i.r.poxton{at}ed.ac.uk

Received February 2, 2009
Accepted April 9, 2009

Although it is desirable to identify the interactions between endotoxin/ lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and the innate immune mechanism, it is often not possible to isolate these interactions from other cell wall related structures of protein or polysaccharide origin. There is no universally accepted method to extract different LPSs from different bacteria, and their natural state will be influenced by their interactions with the associated molecules in the bacterial outer membrane. It is now believed that toll-like receptor (TLR) 4 is the main signal transducer of classical LPS (i.e. Escherichia coli LPS), while TLR2 is used by certain non-classical LPSs. There are contradictory reports as to whether Bacteroides fragilis LPS, a non-classical LPS, signals primarily through TLR2 or TLR4. This study was designed to address this problem. Different non-purified and purified Bacteroides fragilis LPSs extracted by different methods together with different heat-killed, whole cell populations of B. fragilis were used to elucidate the TLR specificity. All of these B. fragilis preparations showed a significant signalling specificity for TLR2 but not TLR4. This indicates that changing the extraction methods, with or without applying a repurification procedure, and varying the cell populations do not alter the TLR specificity of B. fragilis LPS.