VIM and colitis: Mor-Vaknin et al. challenged wild-type and vimentin-knockout mice with Escherichia coli intraperitoneally to induce colitis and found that macrophages of vimentin-knockout mice showed a significantly increased capacity to mediate bacterial killing via abundant production of ROS and nitric oxides33, suggesting that vimentin impeded bacterial killing and contributed to the pathogenesis of acute colitis.