Salmonella enterica
serovar Typhimurium infects intestinal epithelia and macrophages, which is prevented by inhibiting adhesion and cell invasion. This study aimed to investigate the role of methyl gallate (MG) in adhesion, invasion, and intracellular survival of
Salmonella
Typhimurium in Caco-2 and RAW 264.7 cells via a gentamicin protection assay, confocal microscopy, and quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. MG (30 µg/mL) inhibited adhesion and invasion of
Salmonella
Typhimurium by 54.01% and 60.5% in RAW 264.7 cells, respectively. The combination of MG with sub-minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of marbofloxacin (MRB) inhibited the adhesion, invasion, and intracellular survival by 70.49%, 67.36%, and 74%, respectively. Confocal microscopy further revealed reductions in bacterial count in Caco-2 cells treated with MG alone or with sub-MIC of MRB. Furthermore, MG alone or in combination with sub-MIC of MRB decreased the motility of
Salmonella
Typhimurium. Quorum sensing genes including
sdiA
,
srgE
, and
rck
were downregulated by 52.8%, 61.7%, and 22.2%, respectively. Moreover,
rac
-
1
was downregulated by 56.9% and 71.9% for MG alone and combined with sub-MIC of MRB, respectively, in mammalian cells. Furthermore, MG downregulated virulence genes of
Salmonella
Typhimurium including
cheY, ompD
,
sipB
,
lexA
, and
ompF
by 59.6%, 60.2%, 20.5%, 31.4%, and 16.2%, respectively. Together, the present results indicate that MG alone or in combination with a sub-MIC of MRB effectively inhibited the adhesion, invasion, and intracellular survival of
Salmonella
Typhimurium in vitro by downregulating quorum sensing and virulence genes.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1186/s13567-018-0597-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.