Background and Principle
Intracellular bacteria need to enter host cells (cells of the infected organism) in order to replicate and propagate infection. Many species of Shigella (causes bacillary dysentery), Salmonella (typhoid fever), Mycobacterium (leprosy and tuberculosis) and Listeria (listeriosis), to name but a few, are intracellular.
Several antibiotics cannot penetrate eukaryotic cells. Therefore, these antibiotics cannot hurt intracellular bacteria that are already internalized. Using such antibiotics enables us to differentiate between bacteria that succeed in penetrating eukaryotic cells and those that do not. Applying such an antibiotic to a culture of eukaryotic cells infected with bacteria would kill the bacteria that remain outside the cells while sparing the ones that penetrated. The antibiotic of choice for this assay is the aminoglycoside gentamicin.
Read more about this topic: Gentamicin Protection Assay
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