O antigen biogenesis sensitises Escherichia coli K-12 to bile salts, providing a plausible explanation for its evolutionary loss.
Escherichia coli K-12 is a model organism for bacteriology and has served as a workhorse for molecular biology and biochemistry for over a century since its first isolation in 1922.However, Escherichia coli K-12 strains are phenotypically devoid of an O antigen (OAg) since early reports in the scientific literature.Recent studies have reported the