Take an anesthetized male mouse and insert a catheter into its genitalia.
Introduce uropathogenic bacteria into the urethra. Inside the urinary tract, the bacterium attaches to the uroepithelial cell.
The interaction of bacterial surface proteins with host cell membrane proteins induces cytoskeletal rearrangement causing the host cell membrane to tightly wrap around the bacterium through a zipper mechanism.
The bacterium is subsequently internalized within a membrane-bound vesicle. Within the vesicle, the bacterium produces α-hemolysin toxin monomers which assemble to form a pore complex in the vesicular membrane.
The bacterium escapes through the pore complex into the host cell cytoplasm where it replicates to form intracellular bacterial communities, or IBCs. IBCs are dense, biofilm-like structures within host cells, protected from direct attack by immune cells present in the extracellular space.
As the uropathogenic bacteria mature within IBCs, they eventually exit the host cells to infect neighboring cells, causing urinary tract infections.
