Spirochetes Using Motility to Enter and Exit Blood Vessels
A combination of motility and invasins appears to helps Borrelia bergdorferi and Treponema pallidum to invade and exit blood vessels by passing between and through endothelial cells. This enables these spirochetes to dessiminate to other locations in the body. One tip of the spirochete attaches to the host cell and some form of invasin apparently causes the host cell to release digestive enzymes that enable the spirochete with its corkscrewing motility to penetrate the host cell membrane.
Flash animation illustrating Spirochetes Using Motility to Enter and Exit Blood Vessels by Gary E. Kaiser, Ph.D.
Professor of Microbiology,
The Community College of Baltimore County, Catonsville Campus
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://faculty.ccbcmd.edu/~gkaiser/index.html.
Last updated: August, 2018
Please send comments and inquiries to Dr.
Gary Kaiser