Several major invasive bacterial pathogens are encapsulated. Expression of a polysaccharide capsule is essential for
survival in the blood, and thus for virulence, but also is a target for host antibodies and the basis for effective vaccines.
Encapsulated species typically exhibit antigenic variation and express one of a number of immunochemically distinct
capsular polysaccharides that define serotypes. We provide the sequences of the capsular biosynthetic genes of all 90 serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae and relate these to the known polysaccharide structures and patterns of immunological reactivity of typing sera, thereby providing the most complete understanding of the genetics and origins of bacterial polysaccharide diversity, laying the foundations for molecular serotyping. This is the first time, to
our knowledge, that a complete repertoire of capsular biosynthetic genes has been available, enabling a holistic analysis of a bacterial polysaccharide biosynthesis system. Remarkably, the total size of alternative coding DNA at this
one locus exceeds 1.8 Mbp, almost equivalent to the entire S. pneumoniae
chromosomal complement.