Part I. Introduction to Clostridium difficile and the disease it causes -- 1. Clostridium difficile : no longer an enigmatic pathogen? / Adam P. Roberts and Peter Mullany -- 2. Clostridium difficile and the disease it causes / Torbjörn Norén -- Part II. Isolation and culture techniques -- 3. Clostridium difficile isolation and culture techniques / Mike Wren -- Part III. Methods for typing and epidemiological studies -- 4. Molecular typing methods for Clostridium difficile : pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and PCR ribotyping / Sandra Janezic and Maja Rupnik -- 5. Clostridium difficile toxinotyping / Maja Rupnik -- 6. Multilocus sequence typing for Clostridium difficile / Ludovic Lemée and Jean-Louis Pons -- Part IV. Biochemistry of the organism -- 7. Molecular methods to study transcriptional regulation of Clostridium difficile toxin genes / Ana Antunes and Bruno Dupuy -- 8. Dissecting the cell surface / Robert Fagan and Neil Fairweather -- 9. Human intestinal epithelial response(s) to Clostridium difficile / Nazila V. Jafari, Elaine Allan, and Mona Bajaj-Elliott -- Part V. Genomics -- 10. Comparative genome analysis of Clostridium difficile using DNA microarrays / Richard Stabler, Lisa Dawson, and Brendan Wren -- Part VI. Development of systems for genetic analysis of the organism -- 11. ClosTron-targeted mutagenesis / John T. Heap, Stephen T. Cartman, Sarah A. Kuehne, Clare Cooksley, and Nigel P. Minton -- 12. Methods for gene cloning and targeted mutagenesis / Glen P. Carter, Dena Lyras, Rachael Poon, Pauline M. Howarth, and Julian I. Rood -- 13. Transposon mutagenesis in Clostridium difficile / Haitham A. Hussain, Adam P. Roberts, Rachael Whalan, and Peter Mullany -- Part VII. Animal models of disease -- 14. Refinement of the hamster model of Clostridium difficile disease / Gillian Douce and David Goulding -- 15. Methods for working with the mouse model / Anne Collignon.
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"Clostridium difficile is a major nosocomial pathogen and has been shown to be a primary cause of antibiotic-associated disease. Recently, there has been an emergence of highly transmissible and frequently antibiotic-resistant strains, and the organism has become a considerable burden on health-care systems worldwide. At the same time, there has been a dramatic increase in our ability to study the organism. This book brings together the key workers in C. difficile research to describe the recently developed methods for studying the organism. These range from methods for isolation of the organism, molecular typing, genomics, genetic manipulation, and the use of animal models. We are now therefore in a position to gain an in-depth understanding of how this organism is transmitted and how it causes disease."--Page v.