EFB Microbial Physiology Section

 

On Saturday 27 March 2004 at 19:15 the EFB Microbial Physiology Section held a meeting at VVF Vacances in Anglet, France. All Section Members as well as everyone registered for the 2nd Meeting on Physiology of Yeasts and Filamentous Fungi (PYFF 2) had been invited to attend this open meeting.

 

Minutes

1.  Apologies for absence

Apologies had been received from various Section members, among them members of the Section Committee. The Section Chairman, Jeff Cole, had to apologise due to conflicting European Union obligations.

 

 

2.  Minutes of the Open Meeting of the Section held at Basle Congress Center, Switzerland, Tuesday 26 August 2003

 

The minutes were accepted, and signed by the Chairman.

 

 

3.  Matters arising from the Minutes

 

Forthcoming meetings being organised by the Section were reviewed individually later in the Agenda – see below.

 

 

4.  Report from the Section Chairman

 

The report was presented by the Section Secretary, and by Danilo Porro, on behalf of the Chairman.

 

(a)                Vacancies on the Section Committee: please offer to help! At the last meetings, the Section Committee made a call for volunteers to join the Committee to organise specialist meetings, or help with the general running of the Section.  Several nominations were received. The election of new members of the Section Committee was held later during the meeting (see below).

 

 

(b)    Report from the EFB Executive Committee.

The Federation continues to adapt to its new status as an organisation independent of DECHEMA.  Current plans were that a new EFB Central Office will soon open based in the Technical University of Delft.  Applications are invited for the position of EFB General Secretary.

 

The EFB now boasts 3600 personal members and almost 200 corporate members.  Many of the Sections and Task groups would welcome the active participation of these new members in their activities.  Anyone who can spare time to work for the Federation was asked to contact the relevant Chair of the Task Group or Section.

 

Active support in the organisation of the next European Congress of Biotechnology, to be held in Copenhagen in the summer of 2005, was also invited. 

 

Please visit the EFB Website to see how to become involved in any of the above activities.

 

 

 

(c) Review of recent meetings:

(1)  Contribution of the Section to ECB 11 in Basle, Switzerland, August 24-29, 2003. Upon invitation by the organisers, the Microbial Physiology Section has organised two symposia there, one on Recombinant Protein Production, and the other on Microbial Response to Stress. Both sessions were very successful in attracting abstracts and audience.

 

(2)  Physiology, Biochemistry and Genetic Regulation of Electron Transfer Reactions in Bacteria.  Walberberg, Germany, October 12-16, 2003.

This meeting was over-subscribed, some local registrants having to return home each night because no rooms were available either at the monastery or in the local hotel.  The quality of the science presented was amazingly high.  Costs of the meeting exactly matched the registration fees.

 

Offers to host the next meeting in the series were received from Spain, Portugal and Norway. These possibilities are now being investigated.

 

 

(3) Physiology of Yeasts and Filamentous Fungi II (PYFF II). France. March 24-28, 2004.

This current meeting attracted 210 participants, which is a significant increase to PYFF I and a very positive signal of the acceptance of this topic. Most participants came from EU countries, several from overseas, but rather few from the new EU member states and other Eastern European states. The organisers of future meetings should – together with the Section Committee – reconsider how best to advertise the meetings in Eastern Europe.

 

 

5.  Review of progress in the organisation of the forthcoming Section symposia

 

a)  Functional Genomics of Pathogenic Bacteria. Copanello, Italy, 6-8 October, 2004.

This meeting was being organised in cooperation with the EFB Sections on Applied Functional Genomics and Pharma Medical Biotechnology. Appr. 300 participants are anticipated.

See: http://www.tu-berlin.de/biotec/mibi/AG_Lang/efb/efbgenom/efbgenomics.htm for further details. The meeting is now open for registration.

 

b)  Third EFB Symposium on Recombinant Protein Production, Portugal, 11-14 November 2004.   Information is available at:  http://www.ibet.pt/3rdRecProtProd

This meeting was being organised by Manuel Carrondo from IBET, Portugal. The detailed programme is available online. The deadline for early registration was June 30, but there is still the opportunity to register and submit abstracts for posters until September 15. As the number of participants will be limited, early registration was recommended.

 

c)  Analysis of Microbial Cells at the Single Cell Level III. Austria. May, 26 - 29, 2005

   This meeting was being organised by Nicole Borth from Vienna. The meeting will take place at Semmering, Austria. The preliminary programme is available at:

http://www.boku.ac.at/iam/singlecell

The deadline for abstract submission is December 18, 2004, and that for early registration is February 28, 2005.

 

The Session is indebted to FEMS for the continued support of our meetings.

 

d)      Future activities:

Due to the continued interest in the PYFF conferences, the Section members present suggested unanimously that a third meeting on Physiology of Yeasts and Filamentous Fungi should be organised in appr. three years. Potential locations are currently being investigated. Further suggestions are welcome.

 

Several suggestions for meeting topics were made at the previous Section Meeting in Basle. These suggestions are under investigation. Anyone interested in proposing, or helping to organise, future activities should contact the Section Chairman (j.a.cole@bham.ac.uk) or the Secretary (diethard.mattanovich@boku.ac.at).

 

6  Sources of information on Section activities.

Details of all of the Section activities can be obtained from the Section website:

http://www.tu-berlin.de/biotec/mibi/AG_Lang/efb/

or the EFB Website: (http://efbweb.org).

 

7.  Nomination and, if necessary, election of members to the Section Committee

The following colleagues were elected as members of the Section Committee:

 

Jean M Francois: Meetings advisor, Yeast physiology

Pau Ferrer: Treasurer

Ursula Rinas: Membership Secretary

 

The current membership of the Section Committee is available at the Section website (above).

 

8.  Any other business.

Section funds: the current funds of the Section amounts to appr. 10000 EUR, which were mainly derived from some surpluses of previous conferences. These funds are intended to facilitate the start-up of conference activities, to cover potential losses of conferences, and as a backup for the support of young scientists to attend section conferences.

 

Rules for reimbursement of travel costs for invited speakers: It was suggested that the Section should agree not to pay travel costs to speakers attending future meetings. This policy in the past has enabled conference fees to be kept low, and thus enabled many young scientists to attend Section meetings.  The policy had been widely accepted among the speakers.

 

Meeting on Systems Biology: Systems Biology as a current catch word in biological sciences attracts a lot of attention, including an international conference series. Hans v. Westerhoff and Joost Teixeira de Mattos suggested that the Section should consider arranging a specialised meeting in the field of Systems Biology, concentrating on microbial physiology. Anyone interested to support such an activity should contact the Section Chairman or the Secretary.

 

Jeff Cole (Chairman), Birmingham; Diethard Mattanovich (Secretary), Vienna