Actin cytonauts at play in the cell
Tuesday, January 21, 2014 - 17:00
in Biology & Nature
(Phys.org) —Actin "comets" are scaffolds of polymer that various bacteria and viruses construct within cells. Party-crashers, like Listeria or Shigella bacteria, are able to seed structures using special patches of their double membrane. They can then jet themselves, so to speak, across their host cell and into a membrane protrusion, ultimately leading to their engulfment by another cell. A recent paper in Plos Biology describes these comets in never before seen detail. The images presented by the researcher reveal how the herringbone patterns of the actin comets are assembled, and also how they act to self-stabilize the directed propulsion of cell invaders.