Polysaccharides are dominant features of most bacterial surfaces and are displayed in different formats. Many bacteria produce abundant long-chain capsular polysaccharides, which can maintain a strong association and form a capsule structure enveloping the cell and/or take the form of exopolysaccharides that are mostly secreted into the immediate environment. These polymers afford the producing bacteria protection from a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological stresses, support biofilms, and play critical roles in interactions between bacteria and their immediate environments. Their biological and physical properties also drive a variety of industrial and biomedical applications. Despite the immense variation in capsular polysaccharide and exopolysaccharide structures, patterns are evident in strategies used for their assembly and export. This review describes recent advances in understanding those strategies, based on a wealth of biochemical investigations of select prototypes, supported by complementary insight from expanding structural biology initiatives. This provides a framework to identify and distinguish new systems emanating from genomic studies.

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