“Listeria uses the cellular machinery to move around inside the host cell: It induces directed polymerization of actin by the ActA transmembrane protein, thus pushing the bacterial cell around”
“Listeria must then navigate to the cell’s periphery to spread the infection to other cells. Outside the body, Listeria has flagellar-driven motility, sometimes described as a “tumbling motility”. However, at 37 °C, flagella cease to develop and the bacterium instead usurps the host cell’s cytoskeleton to move. Listeria, inventively, polymerizes an actin tail.
Once at the cell surface, the actin-propelled Listeria pushes against the cell’s membrane to form protrusions called filopods”
References
How the Listeria monocytogenes ActA protein converts actin polymerization into a motile force. [Trends Microbiol. 1997] – PubMed – NCBI. (n.d.). National Center for Biotechnology Information. Retrieved April 18, 2013, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9234509
Encephalitis., & infections., a. p. (n.d.). Listeria. Online Textbook of Bacteriology. Retrieved April 18, 2013, from http://textbookofbacteriology.net/Listeria.html
Listeria 