Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 24, 2025
The Citrobacter rodentium Mouse Model: Studying Pathogen and Host Contributions to Infectious Colitis
Published on: February 19, 2013
Dock2 affects the host susceptibility to Citrobacter rodentium infection through regulating gut microbiota
Yuan Xie1,2, Jun Chen2, Bing Wu3
1Department of Nephrology, The First People's Hospital of Nankang District, Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China.
Background:
Dysregulated gut microbiota is one of major pathogenic factors in the development of colitis. Dock2 acts as a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) and activates small G protein RAC1. Our previous study showed that, compared to wild type (WT) mice, Dock2-/- mice were more susceptible to colitis induced by Citrobacter rodentium infection. However, it is not clear whether gut microbiota affects the host susceptibility to enteric bacterial infection in Dock2-/- mice.
Results:
In this study, we demonstrated that Dock2 regulated the gut microbiota and affected the host susceptibility to C. rodentium infection by co-housing, fecal microbiota transfer and antibiotic treatment methods. Microbiota analysis by 16 S rRNA gene sequencing showed that Dock2 increased the abundance of prevotellaceae-NK3B31-group and Lactobacillus but decreased that of Helicobacter.
Conclusions:
These results suggest that Dock2 regulates the composition of gut microbiota and affects the host susceptibility to C. rodentium infection.
