Microvillus inclusion disease (MVID) is a rare intestinal enteropathy with an onset within a few days to months after birth, resulting in persistent watery diarrhea. Mutations in the myosin Vb gene (MYO5B) have been identified in the majority of MVID patients. However, the exact pathophysiology of MVID still remains unclear. To address the specific role of MYO5B in the intestine, we generated an intestine-specific conditional Myo5b-deficient (Myo5b ;Vil-CreERT2 intestines. In addition, we determined that MYO5B is involved not only in apical but also basolateral trafficking of proteins. The analysis of the intestine during the early onset of the disease revealed that subapical accumulation of secretory granules precedes occurrence of microvillus inclusions, indicating involvement of MYO5B in early differentiation of epithelial cells. By comparing our data with a novel MVID patient, we conclude that our mouse model completely recapitulates the intestinal phenotype of human MVID. This includes severe diarrhea, loss of microvilli, occurrence of microvillus inclusions, and subapical secretory granules. Thus, loss of MYO5B disturbs both apical and basolateral trafficking of proteins and causes MVID in mice.is a rare intestinal enteropathy with autosomal recessive inheritance, which was first described in 1978 (1). MVID patients cannot take up any nutrients and are often completely dependent on parenteral nutrition. The disease is characterized by villus atrophy, (partial) loss of microvilli on the apical plasma membrane of intestinal epithelial cells, and accumulation of intracellular vesicles/vacuoles, containing apical proteins and microvilli (2, 3). In addition, some studies also show mislocalization of apical and basolateral proteins, occasional crypt hyperplasia, and villus fusion (4-6).In the great majority of patients, MVID is caused by mutations in MYO5B, encoding the motorprotein, myosin Vb (5). In two patients, mutations in syntaxin 3 (STX3) caused a variant form of MVID (7). More than 41 unique mutations along the different regions in MYO5B have been identified in MVID patients, including deletions and nonsense, missense, and splice-site mutations (8-10). MYO5B is coding for the actin-based myosin 5b motor protein, which regulates apical membrane trafficking (5, 11). MYO5B functions as a homodimer and has three functional domains: an N-terminal motor domain, a calmodulin-binding domain, and a C-terminal tail, which binds cargo through association with the small GTPases RAB8A and/or RAB11A (12, 13). Altered expression of myosin Vb affects the apical membrane trafficking mechanism in epithelial cells, causing mislocalization of apical brush border proteins, such as villin (vil), CD10, or alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in the cytoplasm of duodenal enterocytes (2, 3, 5), and an increased apical localization of transferrin receptor (5,14).Although mouse models mimicking certain features of MVID have previously been described, such as Rab8 (15), Cdc42 (16, 17), and Rab11a knockout (KO) mice (18,19), no mutations in t...