Bacterial Virulence

Starting with basic principles, this reference and handbook discusses examples of the most advanced models of bacterial infection with regard to their value as paradigms to understand the molecular cross talks between microbes and their host and tissue targets. It adopts a very forward-looking, advanced approach, placing special emphasis on the main global challenges facing scientists today, such as pathogenicity vs. commensalisms, infections in immunocompromised hosts and species specificity issues. Bacterial Virulence: Basic Principles, Models and Global Approaches is the second title in Wiley-Blackwell's 'Infection Biology Handbook Series'. The first is Aids and Tuberculosis: A Deadly Liaison, edited by two of the most accomplished experts in this area, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Stefan Kaufmann at the Max-Planck Institute for infectious diseases in Berlin, Germany, and Prof. Dr. Bruce Walker, director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in Boston, USA. CONTENTS BASIC PRINCIPLES How bacterial pathogens got constructed (Dobrindt and Hacker) Antimicrobial mechanisms of neutrophils (Zychlinsky, Chaput) Helicobacter pylori: the way from inflammation to cancer (Chiba, Marusawa, Seno and Watanabe) MODELS Host-pathogen relationship in skin and soft tissue infections caused by Group A streptococcus and Staphylococcus aureus (Mishalian, Ravins, Baruch, Persky, Belotserkovsky and Hanski) Mechanisms of meningeal invasion by septicemic extra cellular pathogens: the examples of Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus agalactiae and Escherichia coli (Join-Lambert, Carbonnelle, Chretien, Bourdoulous, Bonacorsi, Poyart and Nassif) Two important bacterial pathogens causing community acquired pneumonia: Streptococcus pneumoniae and Legionella pneumophila (Buchrieser and Henriques-Normark) The Salmonella-mouse interaction: a versatile model to study bacterial infection (Thompson, Helaine and Holden) Chlamydia ?from molecular insight to therapeutic discovery (Ogilvie, Heuer and Meyer) GLOBAL APPROACHES OF BACTERIAL VIRULENCE The gut microbiota and its contribution to homeostasis (Schnupf and Sansonetti) Anatomy of the gut barrier and establishment of intestinal homeostasis (Sellge, Schnupf and Sansonetti) Dynamic imaging technologies to explore infectious processes at the cellular, tissue and organ level (Enninga, Tournebize, Melican and Richter-Dahlfors) The issue of species specificity of bacterial infection, how to address it experimentally (Disson, Cossart, Lecuit) Professor Sansonetti received his M.D. in 1979 from the University of Paris. From 1979 to 1981, he conducted research in the Department of Enteric Infections at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the United States. He is a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur and received the Prix d'Excellence Jacques Monod en Biologie Moléculaire, the Prix AGIR du Conseil Pasteur-Weitzmann, the Grand Prix de l'Académie de Médecine, the Prix Louis Jeantet de Médecine, and the Robert Koch Prize and Medal. He is a member of the French Academy of Science and a corresponding member of the French Academy of Medicine. In 2007, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently professor at the Institute Pasteur and head of the Unité de Pathogénie Microbienne Moléculaire at the Pasteur Institute of Paris.