Table 1.

Strains and plasmids used in the work.

Species/strain	Characteristics	Reference
L. monocytogenes
EGDe1	Serovar 1/2a, type strain	[27]
EGDeΔinlB1	EGDe derivative with inlB gene deletion	[28]
VIMHA004	Serovar 4b, ST22, clinical isolate obtained from the stillborn, carried idInlB13	[21]
VIMHA015	Serovar 4b, ST12, Clinical isolate obtained from the stillborn, carried idInlB93	[21]
VIMHA034	Serovar 1/2a, ST3142, Clinical isolate obtained from the stillborn, carried idInlB143	[21]
EGDeΔinlB::InlB1	EGDeΔinlB supplemented with the pInlB1 plasmid	[25]
EGDeΔinlB::InlB9	EGDeΔinlB supplemented with the pInlB9 plasmid	[25]
EGDeΔinlB::InlB14	EGDeΔinlB supplemented with the pInlB14 plasmid	[25]
E. coli
JM109	endA1 glnV44 thi-1 relA1 gyrA96 recA1 mcrB+Δ(lac-proAB) e14-[F′ traD36 proAB+lacIqlacZΔM15] hsdR17(rK-mK+)	Promega
BL21 (DE3)	F–ompT gal dcm lon hsdSB(rB-mB-) λ(DE3 [lacI lacUV5-T7 gene 1 ind1 sam7 nin5])	NewEngland BioLabs
Plasmids
pTgem-easy	Cloning vector	Promega
pTRKH2	Shuttle-vector	[29]
pInlAB	pTRKH2::PromoterinlAB::gwdInlB4	[25]
pInlB1	pInlAB::idInlB1	[25]
pInlB9	pInlAB::idInlB9	[25]
pInlB14	pInlAB::idInlB14	[25]

¹The strain was generously provided by Professor J. A. Vazquez-Boland, University of Edinburgh. ²Sequence tyes (STs) are provided according to the MLST protocol by Ragon et al., 2008. ³idInlB is an internalin domain of InlB. ⁴gwdInlB is InlB GW-domain.