Sensitive silver-staining detection of bacterial lipopolysaccharides in polyacrylamide gels

For sensitive detection of bacterial lipopolysaccharides in the nanogram range, three almost identical silver-staining methods are often used, which are based on ammoniacal silver solutions and an acidic developer. We modified a method used for proteins, based on neutral silver nitrate solution and an alkaline developer, for the visualization of lipopolysaccharides in polyacrylamide gels, which yields better sensitivity and is much less prone to formation of non-specific background staining than the acidic developer-based silver stains.