Abstract
Gonococcal colony typing is part a science and part an art that has been central to studies which have identified crucial virulence antigens and also demonstrated the ability of the bacteria to undergo rapid phase and antigenic variation. Without this fundamental work, modern molecular biological studies of gonococcal pathogenesis would not have been possible. Indeed colony typing is still essential when performing biological experiments with clinical and laboratory isolates and for monitoring their outcome. In this chapter, the methods for performing colony typing and techniques to optimize the process are described.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to dedicate this chapter to the memory of John Swanson (1936–2013), whose meticulous observational studies formed the basis of all subsequent gonococcal colony typing and who was the foundation of future studies of the critical role of pili and Opa proteins in gonococcal (and subsequently meningococcal) virulence.
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Heckels, J.E. (2019). Gonococcal Colony Typing. In: Christodoulides, M. (eds) Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1997. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9496-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9496-0_5
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