Substrates

Salt, substrates, and all other chemicals (of analytical grade) were purchased from Sigma–Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). Protein Molecular Weight (MW) markers were from Bio-Rad (Hercules, CA, USA). Ultrapure water (Milli-Q; Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA) was used throughout. Safety precautions were taken for chemical hazards in carrying out the experiments. Ampicillin (25 μg/ml) was used in all the solutions, and sterile experimental conditions were employed where appropriate.

Strains F1^T and F21^T were deposited at the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ; Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany) under the respective accession numbers DSM 106878^T and DSM 106829^T, and at the Korean Collection for Type Cultures (KCTC; Jeongeup-si, South Korea) under the respective accession numbers KCTC 15641^T and KCTC 15642^T. K. glycovorans L21-Fru-AB^T was ordered from the DSMZ (Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany). Strains F1^T and F21^T were cultured in a basal anoxic bicarbonate-buffered marine medium described previously [8 (link)] containing 25 g L⁻¹ NaCl for optimum salinity for growth, with 10 mM L-fucose as the substrate, unless mentioned otherwise. K. glycovorans was cultured in the same basal medium except for containing 60 g L⁻¹ NaCl, with 5 mM D-glucose as the substrate. All cultures were incubated statically at 25 °C in the dark, unless mentioned otherwise. Substrates were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA), unless mentioned otherwise. Polysaccharide Substrates were obtained from various distributors (Table 1).