by Roberto — The O-side chains of lipopolysaccharides (LPS), the outer most feature of most Gram-negative's outer membrane, are highly variable in terms of their chain length and chemical composition. In my last post, I described how the O-side chain of some bacterial strains serve as a settlement and metamorphosis cue for a marine invertebrate. My thoughts immediately took me to this question: What was the early evolutionary history of O-side chain variability? Read more →