The hallmarks of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) infection are formation of attaching and effacing (A/E) lesions on mucosal surfaces and actin-rich pedestals on cultured cells, both of which are dependent on the type III secretion system effector Tir. Following translocation into cultured cells and clustering by intimin, Tir Y474 is phosphorylated, leading to recruitment of Nck, activation of N-WASP, and actin polymerization via the Arp2/3 complex. A secondary, weak, actin polymerization pathway is triggered via an NPY motif (Y454). Importantly, Y454 and Y474 play no role in A/E lesion formation on mucosal surfaces following infection with the EPEC-like mouse pathogen Citrobacter rodentium. In this study, we investigated the roles of Tir segments located upstream of Y451 and downstream of Y471 in C. rodentium colonization and A/E lesion formation. We also tested the role that Tir residues Y451 and Y471 play in host immune responses to C. rodentium infection. We found that deletion of amino acids 382 to 462 or 478 to 547 had no impact on the ability of Tir to mediate A/E lesion formation, although deletion of amino acids 478 to 547 affected Tir translocation. Examination of enterocytes isolated from infected mice revealed that a C. rodentium strain expressing Tir_Y451A/Y471A recruited significantly fewer neutrophils to the colon and triggered less colonic hyperplasia on day 14 postinfection than the wild-type strain. Consistently, enterocytes isolated from mice infected with C. rodentium expressing Tir_Y451A/Y471A expressed significantly less CXCL1. These result show that Tir-induced actin remodeling plays a direct role in modulation of immune responses to C. rodentium infection.
Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) strains are important human pathogens causing infantile diarrhea in low-income countries (1) Recently, the Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS), designed to detect the cause of pediatric diarrheal disease in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, found that infection with typical EPEC is associated with increased risk of fatality in infants aged 0 to 11 months (2). Citrobacter rodentium is a mouse-specific pathogen, the etiological agent of transmissible colonic hyperplasia, and a model EPEC microorganism, as both pathogens share an infection strategy and virulence factors (3, 4). Host resistance to C. rodentium infection is mediated by diverse T cell effector responses, including T cell production of interferon gamma (IFN-␥) (5, 6), interleukin 17A (IL-17A) (7,8),. Expression of the proinflammatory cytokine IL-17A leads to recruitment of neutrophils (10), and the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-22 upregulates expression of antimicrobial peptides (such as REGIII and REGIII␥) in enterocytes (9, 11).While colonizing the gut mucosa, EPEC and C. rodentium induce attaching and effacing (A/E) lesions. These are characterized by extensive remodeling of the gut epithelium leading to elongation and effacement of the brush border (BB) microvilli, intimate bacterial attachment to the enterocyte apical...