Techniques -- Automated Blood Cultures -- Urea Breath Tests for Detection of Helicobacter pylori -- Rapid Antigen Tests -- Advanced Antibody Detection -- Phenotypic Testing of Bacterial Antimicrobial Susceptibility -- Biochemical Profile-Based Microbial Identification Systems -- Rapid Bacterial Characterization and Identification by MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry -- Probe-Based Microbial Detection and Identification -- Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis -- In Vitro Nucleic Acid Amplification: An Introduction -- PCR and Its Variations -- Non-Polymerase Chain Reaction Mediated Target Amplification Techniques -- Recent Advances in Probe Amplification Technologies -- Signal Amplification Techniques: bDNA, Hybrid Capture -- Detection and Characterization of Molecular Amplification Products: Agarose Gel Electrophoresis, Southern Blot Hybridization, Restriction Enzyme Digest Analysis, and Enzyme-Linked Immunoassay -- Direct Nucleotide Sequencing for Amplification Product Identification -- Microarray-Based Microbial Identification and Characterization -- Diagnostic Microbiology Using Real-Time PCR Based on FRET Technology -- Amplification Product Inactivation -- Applications -- Bacterial Identification Based on 16S Ribosomal RNA Gene Sequence Analysis -- Molecular Techniques for Blood and Blood Product Screening -- Review of Molecular Techniques for Sexually Transmitted Diseases Diagnosis -- Advances in the Diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Detection of Drug Resistance -- Rapid Screening and Identification of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- Bead-Based Flow Cytometric Assays: A Multiplex Assay Platform with Applications in Diagnostic Microbiology -- Molecular Strain Typing Using Repetitive Sequence-Based PCR -- Molecular Differential Diagnoses of Infectious Diseases: Is the Future Now? -- Pathogen Detection in the Genomic Era.