MicrobeWorld

The type III secretion system allows Salmonella typhimurium to get the goods into your cells: bacterial effector proteins travel through the connected inner and outer membrane rings and down a protruding needle-like tube, into the host cell. Despite the importance of S. typhimurium as a human pathogen, we still don’t fully understand how the type III secretion system is assembled or how it works. A paper recently released by mBio builds on what we do know about the type III secretion system and how the various components of the apparatus fit together to make their not-so-nice needle of pain.