Carbohydrate analysis by methanolysis method and application to compositional analysis of transparent exopolymer particles

Measurement of uronic acids (URAs) which are a group of acidic sugar, would be useful for the understanding of dynamics of bacterial extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) in marine environments. However, the URA analysis using traditional hydrolysis method which is used for neutral sugar analysis poses serious problems in URA that is unstable under hydrolysis. We developed the methanolysis method, which deploymerizes polysaccharides while retaining quantitative information. Our method was applied to coastal seawater, and the URAs distribution was compared with that of transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) which are acidic sugar containing particles. Since the relationship of URA with TEP was relatively weak, URA-containing polysaccharides present in bacterial EPS would not participate as a structural component of TEP.