Abstract
Citrobacter rodentium is used as a model organism to study enteric bacterial infections in mice. Infection occurs via the oral–fecal route and results in the pathogen forming attaching and effacing lesions on infected epithelial cells. Moreover, infection leads to a subsequent host-mediated form of colitis. C. rodentium infection is thus an excellent model to study infectious colitis in vivo, while the ability to genetically manipulate C. rodentium virulence genes provides the opportunity to develop clear insights into the pathogenesis of this and related infectious microbes. This chapter outlines the basic techniques involved in setting up a C. rodentium infection in mice and several different methodologies to assess the severity of the infection.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsSpringer Nature is developing a new tool to find and evaluate Protocols. Learn more
References
Vulcano AB, Tino-De-Franco M, Amaral JA, Ribeiro OG et al (2014) Oral infection with enteropathogenic Escherichia coli triggers immune response and intestinal histological alterations in mice selected for their minimal acute inflammatory responses. Microbiol Immunol 58:352–359
Mundy R, Girard F, FitzGerald AJ, Frankel G (2006) Comparison of colonization dynamics and pathology of mice infected with enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, enterohaemorrhagic E. coli and Citrobacter rodentium. FEMS Microbiol Lett 265:126–132
Borenshtein D, McBee ME, Schauer DB (2008) Utility of the Citrobacter rodentium infection model in laboratory mice. Curr Opin Gastroenterol 24:32–37
Petty NK, Bulgin R, Crepin VF, Cerdeno-Tarraga AM et al (2010) The Citrobacter rodentium genome sequence reveals convergent evolution with human pathogenic Escherichia coli. J Bacteriol 192:525–538
Deng W, Vallance BA, Li Y, Puente JL, Finlay BB (2003) Citrobacter rodentium translocated intimin receptor (Tir) is an essential virulence factor needed for actin condensation, intestinal colonization and colonic hyperplasia in mice. Mol Microbiol 48:95–115
Wiles S, Clare S, Harker J, Huett A et al (2004) Organ specificity, colonization and clearance dynamics in vivo following oral challenges with the murine pathogen Citrobacter rodentium. Cell Microbiol 6:963–972
Bhinder G, Sham HP, Chan JM, Morampudi V, Jacobson K, Vallance BA (2013) The Citrobacter rodentium mouse model: studying pathogen and host contributions to infectious colitis. J Vis Exp 72:e50222
Prescher JA, Contag CH (2010) Guided by the light: visualizing biomolecular processes in living animals with bioluminescence. Curr Opin Chem Biol 14:80–89
Meighen EA (1991) Molecular biology of bacterial bioluminescence. Microbiol Rev 55:123–142
Martinez-Garcia E, Aparicio T, de Lorenzo V, Nikel PI (2014) New transposon tools tailored for metabolic engineering of gram-negative microbial cell factories. Front Bioeng Biotechnol 2:46
Kasai GJ, Burrows W (1966) The titration of cholera toxin and antitoxin in the rabbit ileal loop. J Infect Dis 116:606–614
Luperchio SA, Schauer DB (2001) Molecular pathogenesis of Citrobacter rodentium and transmissible murine colonic hyperplasia. Microbes Infect 3:333–340
Koroleva EP, Halperin S, Gubernatorova EO, Macho-Fernandez E, Spencer CM, Tumanov AV (2015) Citrobacter rodentium-induced colitis: a robust model to study mucosal immune responses in the gut. J Immunol Methods 421:61–72
Wlodarska M, Willing B, Keeney KM, Menendez A et al (2011) Antibiotic treatment alters the colonic mucus layer and predisposes the host to exacerbated Citrobacter rodentium-induced colitis. Infect Immun 79:1536–1545
Chen J, Waddell A, Lin YD, Cantorna MT (2015) Dysbiosis caused by vitamin D receptor deficiency confers colonization resistance to Citrobacter rodentium through modulation of innate lymphoid cells. Mucosal Immunol 8:618–626
Lupp C, Robertson ML, Wickham ME, Sekirov I, Champion OL, Gaynor EC, Finlay BB (2007) Host-mediated inflammation disrupts the intestinal microbiota and promotes the overgrowth of Enterobacteriaceae. Cell Host Microbe 2:119–129
Bergstrom KS, Kissoon-Singh V, Gibson DL, Ma C et al (2010) Muc2 protects against lethal infectious colitis by disassociating pathogenic and commensal bacteria from the colonic mucosa. PLoS Pathog 6:e1000902
Diner EJ, Garza-Sanchez F, Hayes CS (2011) Genome engineering using targeted oligonucleotide libraries and functional selection. Methods Mol Biol 765:71–82
Datsenko KA, Wanner BL (2000) One-step inactivation of chromosomal genes in Escherichia coli K-12 using PCR products. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 97:6640–6645
Wiles S, Dougan G, Frankel G (2005) Emergence of a ‘hyperinfectious’ bacterial state after passage of Citrobacter rodentium through the host gastrointestinal tract. Cell Microbiol 7:1163–1172
Vallance BA, Deng W, Jacobson K, Finlay BB (2003) Host susceptibility to the attaching and effacing bacterial pathogen Citrobacter rodentium. Infect Immun 71:3443–3453
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Bosman, E.S., Chan, J.M., Bhullar, K., Vallance, B.A. (2016). Investigation of Host and Pathogen Contributions to Infectious Colitis Using the Citrobacter rodentium Mouse Model of Infection. In: Ivanov, A. (eds) Gastrointestinal Physiology and Diseases. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1422. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3603-8_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3603-8_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-3601-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-3603-8
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols