Knocking E. coli off of their pedestals: Understanding the strategies microbes exploit to generate morphological structures during their disease processes

When the extracellular attaching and effacing pathogens [enteropathogenic E. coli, enterohaemorrhagic E. coli and Citrobacter rodentium] exploit their host cells, morphologically distinct actin‐rich structures are generated beneath the attached bacteria. These structures, called pedestals, protrude from the cell surface, enable the bacteria to “surf” atop infected cells and are hallmarks of the infections. Contained within these structures are numerous actin‐associated components that would be predicted to be at dynamic actin‐rich structures including the Arp2/3 complex, cortactin, profilin and cofilin. Recently my lab has discovered that unexpected proteins are also present within pedestals. These include clathrin‐mediated endocytic proteins and protein components of the spectrin cytoskeleton. These proteins are crucial for pedestal generation as their alteration blocks pedestal formation and often also inhibits attachment of the bacteria to their target cells, thus halting the infections. By using E. coli pedestals as a model system to also study general cell motility we have shown novel roles for a variety of cellular proteins. Taken together our examination of E. coli pedestals has already provided potential targets for pharmaceutical intervention as well as novel insights into general cell biological processes.