Comet Watching

Infection with Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) can be fatal, so scientists are looking for weaknesses in how it spreads through human cells. The bacterium often hijacks its host’s cytoskeleton – the tiny network of pipe-like actin and tubulin proteins that prop up our cell membranes. Pictured here in 3D under a super-resolution microscope, Lm coaxes a new cytoskeleton structure to grow – a wispy ‘comet’, with actin highlighted in green, tubulin in red and Lm, in cyan, sitting at the top of the comet’s tail. Lm uses the comet as a sort of catapult (although 10 million times smaller) – flinging itself towards other cells to the spread an infection. But scientists may have found a way to dismantle these microscopic siege weapons. Depriving them of a protein called stathmin prevents tubulin from being 'recruited' to build the comet, and may be the key to new treatments designed to block Listeria’s spread.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Video from work by Ana Catarina Costa and colleagues
• Group of Molecular Microbiology, i3S-Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, IBMC-Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
• Video provided by and copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, March 2019