Fragmentation analysis of O-specific polysaccharide from bacteria by MALDI-TOF and LC/ESI-MS/MS.

Cholera is a life-threatening diarrhoeal disease caused by ingestion of . There are at least 200 serogroups of but only two of them are causing epidemics - and serogroups. Fragmentation analysis of O-antigen, also known as O-specific polysaccharide (OSP), from lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is important to obtain new information about its structure, such as fragmentation patterns and fragment structures.