Lines 316–317: We did not notice this point. Polysaccharide chain may not be very long. Many of the products of the hps gene cluster encode glycosyltransferases and pseudopilins, which are, respectively, involved in the synthesis and secretion of the slime. The secretion of slime is likely mediated by some molecular machinery that is otherwise involved in type II secretion/motility machinery. Reference 24 was added.
Because the EM figures are difficult to view within the Word document, we provide a high-quality figure as a supplement.