Citrobacter rodentium

Citrobacter rodentium is a Gram-negative bacterium that causes transmissible colonic crypt hyperplasia in mice. It is an extracellular pathogen that infects intestinal epithelial cells (IECs), primarily in the colon, while forming attaching and effacing (A/E) lesions. These lesions facilitate intimate bacterial attachment to the cell’s apical surface and effacement of the brush border microvilli, while also triggering cytoskeletal remodelling, leading to the formation of actin-rich pedestal-like structures upon which the bacterium ‘sits’.