Detection of regioisomeric macrocyclic tetraethers in the lipids of Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum and other archaeal organisms

Abstract

Chemical degradation shows that an apparently homogeneous preparation from the lipids of Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum is in fact a mixture of the regioisomeric compounds 2 and 8 differing in the relative orientation of their glycerol units; a similar situation holds for the related diglycerol tetraethers of Thermoplasma acidophilum and Sulfolobus solfataricus.