What do the following have in common: the promise of Botox as the key to everlasting youthful looks; E. coli O157 hamburger disease; a mysterious illness which killed 35 heroin users in 2000; and the assassination by poisoned umbrella-tip of a Bulgarian dissident in the 1970s? The answer is that all of these are caused by toxins, the powerful biological poisons released by bacteria and some plants.
In Toxin, Alistair Lax reveals the panoply of ways in which bacterial toxins overcome the defenses of our cells. He explains how they work, how they are so successful in causing major diseases, the terrible human impact they have had, and how apparently "new" diseases arise from them. He also discusses how we can combat toxins, and how we can harness their actions for beneficial purposes. Enlivened by the very human story of the persistence, rivalries, and insights from which modern microbiology grew, Toxin is the first widely accessible account of this exciting and important topic.

Bacterial toxins that act inside cells interact very specifically with key components of the cell and some even manipulate the cell in subtle ways for their own purposes. These potent toxins, described in this 2005 book, will be of interest to both microbiologists and cell biologists. Some of these toxins are conventional multidomain toxins that are self-programmed to enter cells. Others are delivered by type III mechanisms, often as a package of potent molecules. The molecular targets for all these toxins mediate signal transduction and the cell cycle to regulate the crucial processes of cell growth, cell division and differentiation. Thus these potent toxins are not only responsible for disease, but also provide a powerful set of tools with which to interrogate the biology of the cell. In addition such toxins may act directly to promote carcinogenesis and hence their study is also of interest in a wider context.