Microbial Transmission
ASM Books Series

Microbial transmission, the processes by which microbes transit to new environments, is a significant and broad-reaching concept with applications throughout the biological sciences. This collection of reviews, edited by an international team of experts studying and working across a range of disciplines, explores transmission not just as an idea in disease but as a fundamental biological process that acts in all domains of nature and exerts its force on disparate size scales, from the micro to the macro, and across units of time as divergent as a single bacterial replication cycle and the entire course of evolution.

In five sections, this overview

• Defines the concept of transmission and covers basic processes of transmission, including causality, control strategies, fitness costs, virulence, and selection
• Presents numerous combinations of transmission scenarios across the bacterial, animal, and human interface
• Examines transmission as the defining characteristic of infectious disease
• Presents methods for experimentally verifying and quantifying transmission episodes
• Concludes with important theoretical and modeling approaches

Anyone studying or working in microbial colonization, evolution, pathogenicity, antimicrobial resistance, or public health will benefit from a deeper understanding of Microbial Transmission.

1. Origin, History, and Meanings of the Word Transmission 

Joaquín Villalba, Fernando A. Navarro, Francisco Cortés 

2. Causality in Biological Transmission: Forces and Energies 

Fernando Baquero 

3. Natural and Artificial Strategies to Control the Conjugative Transmission of Plasmids 

María Getino, Fernando de la Cruz 

4. Fitness Costs of Plasmids: A Limit to Plasmid Transmission

Alvaro San Millan, R. Craig MacLean 

5. Basic Processes in Salmonella-Host Interactions: Within-Host Evolution and the Transmission of the Virulent Genotype

Médéric Diard, Wolf-Dietrich Hardt 

6. Salmonella Intracellular Lifestyles and Their Impact on Host-to-Host Transmission 

M. Graciela Pucciarelli, Francisco García-del Portillo 

7. Selection and Transmission of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Dan I. Andersson, Diarmaid Hughes 

8. Ecology and Evolution of Chromosomal Gene Transfer between Environmental Microorganisms and Pathogens

José Luis Martínez 

9. Food-to-Humans Bacterial Transmission

Patrícia Antunes, Carla Novais, Luísa Peixe 

10. Insects and the Transmission of Bacterial Agents

Maureen Laroche, Didier Raoult, Philippe Parola 

11. Biology of Hand-to-Hand Bacterial Transmission

Rosa del Campo, Laura Martínez-García, Ana María Sánchez-Díaz, Fernando Baquero 

12. Transmission Surveillance for Antimicrobial-Resistant Organisms in the Health System

Johann D. D. Pitout 

13. The Evolution of Genotyping Strategies to Detect, Analyze, and Control Transmission of Tuberculosis

Darío García de Viedma, Laura Pérez-Lago  

14. Breaking Transmission with Vaccines: The Case of Tuberculosis

Jesus Gonzalo-Asensio, Nacho Aguilo, Dessislava Marinova, Carlos Martin 

15. Transmission, Human Population, and Pathogenicity: the Ebola Case in Point

Rafael Delgado, Fernando Simón 

16. Quantifying Transmission

Mark Woolhouse 

17. Experimental Epidemiology of Antibiotic Resistance: Looking for an Appropriate Animal Model System

Pablo Llop, Amparo Latorre, Andrés Moya 

18. Transmission in the Origins of Bacterial Diversity, From Ecotypes to Phyla 

Frederick M. Cohan 

19. Tracking the Rules of Transmission and Introgression with Networks 

Chloé Vigliotti, Cédric Bicep, Eric Bapteste, Philippe Lopez, Eduardo Corel