Building diverse cultures

You are invited to attend the ASM 2010 Sydney Annual Scientific Meeting & Exhibition of the Australian Society for Microbiology.

When: 4-8 July 2010

Where: Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre

Registration: www.asm2010.org/registration.htm

The Australian Society of Microbiology 2010 Annual Scientific Meeting & Exhibition theme is ‘Building Diverse Cultures’. The conference is expected to attract 1100+ microbiologists, hospital and department heads, buyers, decision-makers and industry users over the four days, making ASM 2010 Australia’s largest microbiology event for 2010.

The scientific program will bring industry leaders and thinkers together, people who are at the cutting-edge of science, to provide a thought-provoking, stimulating and educating scientific program. This will be an opportune time to stay up to date with the latest technology, industry practices and global issues which are affecting us all.

A colourful social and networking program has also been developed which will reflect Sydney’s rich and diverse multiculturalism and provide lots of opportunities for delegate interaction.

Just some of the highlights

Bazeley Orator - Professor Harald zur Hausen

Sponsored by CSL, the Bazeley Oration honours Dr Val Bazeley’s contribution to Australian microbiology. This year, Nobel Laureate Professor Harald zur Hausen from the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, Germany, is the Bazeley Orator. Professor zur Hausen has a special interest in infection-induced malignancies. He showed the role of papillomaviruses in cervical cancer and discovered a larger number of novel virus types.

Rubbo Orator - Professor Staffan Kjelleberg

The Rubbo Trust - University of Melbourne honours Professor Sydney Rubbo by sponsoring the 2010 Rubbo Orator - this year, Professor Staffan Kjelleberg. From the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Kjelleberg is internationally recognised for his studies on bacterial adaptive responses, bacterial signalling and communication, bacterial biofilm biology, and chemically mediated interactions between bacteria and marine sessile organisms.

His research approach includes molecular-based studies of the mechanisms by which bacteria respond to prevailing conditions, as well as environmental genomics of natural microbial consortia.

Fenner Lecturer - Associate Professor Elizabeth Hartland

Associate Professor Elizabeth Hartland, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne, will present the Fenner lecture. Dr Hartland is interested in the virulence mechanisms of enteropathogenic and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli and has established an independent research laboratory investigating the pathogenesis of infections caused by E. coli and Legionella.

Other notable speakers

Professor Simon Foster

Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

My research has 2 main foci. Firstly, we work on a number of projects concerning the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus ranging from development of a vaccine, through understanding its interaction with the human host to unravelling the basic mechanisms of growth and division. The second main area of study is associated with the determination of the structure, architecture and dynamics of the bacterial cell wall. For many years we have analysed the structure of cell wall peptidoglycan, but have recently begun to employ atomic force microscopy to elucidate the architecture of this essential polymer. This has revealed novel features, which allow peptidoglycan to determine cell shape and maintain cellular integrity.

Professor Mark Harris

Molecular Biology, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

After undergraduate study at Plymouth Polytechnic, I undertook my PhD at the Institute of Virology in Glasgow, working with Ron Hay on adenovirus DNA replication. I then did a postdoc at the NERC Institute of Virology in Oxford working on baculoviruses with Bob Possee, and subsequently moved back to Glasgow to the Department of Veterinary Pathology where I worked on the HIV-1 Nef protein with Jim Neil.

In 1994 I obtained an MRC Senior AIDS Research Fellowship and subsequently moved to Leeds in 1997, taking up a lectureship post in the Department of Microbiology. While retaining an interest in HIV, my lab has moved over almost entirely to the study of hepatitis C virus, focusing on mechanisms of virus replication and virus-host interactions. My funding comes from research councils, the Wellcome Trust and industry.

I am currently an editor of Journal of General Virology and serve on both the Virus Division Committee and Council of the Society for General Microbiology.

Professor Barbara Howlett

School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic

My main research interests are fungal genetics and fungal diseases of plants. Most of the research involves Leptosphaeria maculans, the fungus that causes blackleg disease of canola. My approach ranges from developing plant disease management strategies, to jointly leading an initiative with French scientists to sequence and annotate the 16,000 genes of this fungus. My research team has pioneered the development of genetic and molecular techniques for the blackleg fungus to understand how the fungus causes disease. We use molecular markers to monitor populations of the blackleg fungus for changes of virulence. We also study sclerotinia stem rot of canola. Many findings are of major significance to fungal biology and plant disease. I am also analysing genes involved in the biosynthesis of an important class of toxins (epipolythiodioxopiperazines) in a range of filamentous fungi, including animal and plant pathogens. These toxins include sirodesmin in L. maculans and gliotoxin in Aspergillus fumigatus. We are analysing regulation and evolution of toxin gene clusters in fungi.

Professor Victor de Lorenzo

National Center For Biotechnology, Spanish National Research Council, Madrid Spain

Professor Víctor de Lorenzo is a chemist by training and he holds a position of Research Professor in the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), where he currently heads the Laboratory of Environmental Molecular Microbiology at the National Center for Biotechnology. After his PhD at the CSIC Institute of Enzymology (1983), he worked at the Pasteur Institute (1984), the University of California at Berkeley (1985-1987), the University of Geneva (1988) and the Federal Center for Biotechnology in Braunschweig until 1991, the year in which he joined the CSIC in Madrid.

He specialises in molecular biology and biotechnology of soil bacteria (particularly Pseudomonas putida) as agents for the decontamination of sites damaged by industrial waste. At present, his work explores the interface between the synthetic biology and environmental biotechnology.

Professor Aaron Mitchell

Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA, USA

I became fascinated with biology and genetics as an undergraduate researcher with Elizabeth Jones at Carnegie Mellon University, where I am now a Professor Biological Sciences. I went on to PhD studies at MIT with Boris Magasanik, and worked on yeast glutamine synthetase. I did a postdoc with Ira Herskowitz at UCSF, focusing on the control of meiosis by the yeast mating type locus. I took a position as Assistant Professor of Microbiology at Columbia University Medical Center (P&S) in 1987, and stayed until 2008, having become Acting Chair and Harold S Ginsberg Professor of Molecular Pathogenesis.

My research focuses on pathogenicity of C. albicans and signal transduction in C. albicans and S. cerevisiae. I was introduced to C. albicans genetics during an all-too-short sabbatical with Myra Kurtz at Merck in 1995. I have served as course co-director of the MBL Molecular Mycology summer course since its inception in 1997.

Professor James Musser

Department of Pathology, Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Texas USA

James M Musser, MD, PhD is the Executive Vice-President and Co-Director of the Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston. He holds the Fondren Foundation Distinguished Endowed Chair and directs the Center for Molecular and Translational Human Infectious Diseases Research at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute. He also is vice chairman of the Department of Pathology at The Methodist Hospital.

Dr Musser received his MD and PhD from the University of Rochester School of Medicine (1988). He performed postdoctoral research on the molecular population genetics of pathogenic bacteria in the laboratory of Professor RK Selander. After residency training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine (1991), where he was named Professor of Pathology and Microbiology and Immunology in 1998. In 1999, he accepted a position with the Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Health, where he was Founding Chief, Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis. In 2003 he returned to Baylor as the James R Davis professor of pathology, associate chairman of pathology, and director of the Center for Human Bacterial Pathogenesis. In 2005, he and his laboratory moved to the Methodist Hospital Research Institute. His laboratory works primarily on group A Streptococcus using genome-wide investigative strategies, with special emphasis on understanding molecular genetic events contributing to clone emergence and strain genotype-patient phenotype relationships.

Professor Patrice Nordmann

Department of Bacteriology-Virology, Hospital Bicetre, Paris

Professor Patrice Nordmann is the Chief of the Dept of Bacteriology - Virology at the hospital Bicetre and Professor in Clinical Microbiology at the South-Paris Medical School (South-Paris University).

He has MD and PhD degrees from Paris University. He has been trained also as a postdoc in molecular genetics and biochemistry in the US (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and in Switzerland (University of Basel). He has founded a research unit at the Bicetre hospital since 1997 (INSERM unit in 2008), on molecular genetics, epidemiology and biochemistry of emerging resistance mechanisms mostly in Gram negatives.

Professor Patrice Nordmann’s attendance at ASM 2010 Sydney is made possible with the support of AstraZeneca.

Professor Thomas Silhavy

Molecular Biology, Princeton University, New Jersey USA

Thomas J Silhavy is the Warner-Lambert Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Silhavy is a bacterial geneticist who has made fundamental contributions to several different research fields. He is best known for his work on protein secretion, membrane biogenesis, and signal transduction. Using E. coli as a model system, his lab was the first to isolate signal sequence mutations, to identify a component of cellular protein secretion machinery, and an integral membrane component of the outer membrane assembly machinery, and to identify and characterise a two-component regulatory system. Current work in his lab is focused on the mechanisms of outer membrane biogenesis and the regulatory systems that sense and respond to envelope stress and trigger the developmental pathway that allows cells to survive starvation. He is the author of more than 200 research articles and three books.

Professor Patrick Woo

Department of Microbiology, University of Hong Kong

Professor Patrick CY Woo obtained his medical degree in The University of Hong Kong in 1991. He joined the Department of Microbiology of The University of Hong Kong in 1997 and became Professor of Microbiology in 2006. Professor Woo has established himself as one of the leaders in the field of emerging infectious diseases, novel viruses, bacteria and fungi and novel causes of unexplained infectious disease syndromes, as well as microbial genomics.

Notable examples of novel viruses discovered in Professor Woo’s laboratory include human coronavirus HKU1, bat SARS coronavirus and other bat and avian coronaviruses. Professor Woo is currently an appointed member of the Coronavirus Taxonomy Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.

Exhibitors and sponsors

• AMS Laboratories
• AstraZeneca
• AusDiagnostics
• Australian Genome Research Facility
• BD
• Bio Cabinets
• Bioline Australia
• bioMerieux
• Bio-Rad
• Bruker Daltonics
• Crown Scientific
• CSL
• Diagnostic Technology
• Don Whitley Scientific
• Genesearch
• Immuno
• In Vitro Technologies
• Integrated Sciences
• Inverness Medical
• McFarlane Medical & Scientific
• Miele Professional
• Olympus Australia
• Oxoid Australia
• Pathtech
• Qiagen
• Roche Diagnostics
• Sarstedt Australia
• Sequenom Asia Pacific
• Testo
• Thermo Fisher Australia
• TrendBio
• University of Melbourne
• Vilair-AAF
• Vital Diagnostics
• Wiley Blackwell

Workshops

A number of workshops will run before and during the conference. You can find out more on the ASM 2010 website, www.asm2010.org/workshops.htm.

• 3rd LLMSIG Professional Development Workshop
• Antimicrobial resistance among bacterial pathogens: mechanisms, detection and molecular epidemiology
• Fluorescence microscopy techniques for microbiologists
• Ocular microbiology workshop
• Serology Sunday workshop
• Clinical mycology workshop
• A mycology foray!
• Education workshop
• Bacterial identification workshop: back to basics