Back

Virulence priming of Listeria monocytogenes inside replication-permissive endolysosomes

Petit, T. J. P.; Guette-Marquet, S.; Candat, A.; Viry, A.; Desprat, N.; Lebreton, A.

2025-09-02 microbiology
10.1101/2025.09.02.673654 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), the foodborne pathogen responsible for listeriosis, is well-known for its intracellular lifestyle. After entering epithelial cells, it can evade within minutes from its internalization vacuole into the cytosol, or transiently co-opt and replicate within endomembrane compartments termed epithelial Spacious ListeriA-containing Phagosomes (eSLAPs). Although eSLAPs display endolysosomal features, we bring evidence that they lack cathepsin D activity and are permeated. Indeed, sustained eSLAP membrane perforation by listeriolysin O is crucial for accommodating bacterial growth and vacuole expansion. Conversely, we show that Lm broad range phospholipase C PlcB is the main escape factor from eSLAPs. Unexpectedly, we find that Lm PrfA-dependent cytosolic virulence program is primed inside eSLAPs. As a consequence, the bacteria released from eSLAPs are pre-equipped with the actin assembly-inducing protein ActA and can recruit actin faster. We propose that a delayed access to the cytosol benefit eSLAP-transiting bacteria by favoring their dissemination or evasion from xenophagy.

Matching journals

The top 2 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.