Giant viruses belonging to the Megavirinae subfamily have capsids with extending glycans. These hair-like structures play major roles in the infection process since amoeba recognize the “sweet taste” similar to saccharides on bacterial surfaces. The study Giant viruses of the Megavirinae subfamily possess biosynthetic pathways to produce rare bacterial-like sugars in a clade-specific manner in microLife reveals that the saccharide composition of these co-called fibrils is highly variable and depends on the clade the virus belongs to. Anna Notaro, Cristina De Castro and Chantal Abergel explain for the #FEMSmicroBlog how novel virally encoded machineries synthesize these saccharides.