Determination of Bacterial Adherence to Mouse Tissues Using a Hematogenous Model

This procedure is used to determine the tissue tropism of bacteria to mouse tissues. Briefly, a high dose of bacteria is inoculated intravenously via the mouse tail vein. Bacteria are allowed to circulate through the blood for a short duration of time, during which they will adhere to the endothelium in tissues for which there is a tropism. After the desired time, sterile saline is perfused through the animal and any unbound bacteria are washed away. Tissues harvested after perfusion will contain any bound bacteria, and tissue-specific tropism can be determined qualitatively by culturing live organisms from tissue or quantitatively by qPCR on DNA from harvested tissue. This method is also useful for determining bloodstream survival, a marker for complement resistance.