Some characteristics of the outer membrane material released by growing enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli.

The high-molecular-weight material released into the medium by Escherichia coli AP1, an enterotoxigenic strain of porcine origin, has been isolated and resolved into two clearly distinct fractions, based on sucrose density gradient and differential centrifugation, chemical analysis, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and freeze-fracture electron microscopy. These two fractions, referred to as "medium vesicles" and "medium lipopolysaccharides", were compared with the cellular outer and cytoplasmic membranes, the periplasmic fraction, and the cytoplasmic fraction. The medium vesicles closely resembled outer membrane and accounted for 3 to 5% of the total cellular outer membrane. They contained most of the heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) activity released into the medium by E. coli AP1. The medium lipopolysaccharide consisted mostly of lipopolysaccharide and a small amount of outer membrane and contained relatively little LT activity. Based on experiments with E. coli K-12 strains, in which about 5% of the newly synthesized outer membrane is lost from areas of outer membrane synthesis, it is proposed that enterotoxigenic E. coli strains release LT as part of such newly synthesized outer membrane fragments and that released outer membrane fragments may function as physiologically significant LT carriers.