SGM Spring Conference - My Experience

The Society for General Microbiology came to town this week. Their annual Spring conference was held in Manchester this year, which was very convenient. This post summarises my experiences from the first two days of the meeting.

So, aside from almost barging into a Professional Hairdressers Conference, which was going on at the same time (and I know I'm not the only person who almost made that mistake), getting registered and getting our bearings was very smooth and straightforward. I was planning to stay resolutely fixed to the symposium entitled "Metabolic Interactions at the Host-Pathogen Interface"; and for the most-part, I did. So, even though neither metabolism nor the host-pathogen interface are particularly pertinent to my research, I was ready to learn all about them.

Monday
The morning was heavy on intra-cellular pathogens, such as Listeria, Salmonella and Plasmodium. I tend to get up on my soapbox when academics talk about the importance of Salmonella, because public perception of food poisoning is often that Salmonella and E. coli are the biggest players in disease, but I was pleased to see that Paul Barrow gave Campylobacters their just credit! After these talks, we all headed to the auditorium for the Colworth Prize Lecture, delivered by Jeffrey Almond. His talk was about vaccine development, and was certainly very interesting from a business perspective. Academics can sometimes forget that if there's not enough market interest in a product, then no one can afford to spend the money developing it.

After the delicious (although bijou) lunch, it was back to Charter 1 for more metabolic interactions. This time, the most interesting talks for me were given by Tyrrell Conway and David Clarke, because there was some 'real' microbiology! Tyrrell's presentation was about his research into colonisation of the gut by E. coli, which is a very buzz topic at the moment. Conversely, David told us all about a very funky bacterium called Photorhabdus, which glows bright green (for no apparent reason) and which has a very intricate relationship with a nematode worm. Between these two some of the details were positively stomach turning (lots of poo and exploding worms!). Campylobacter jejuni finally made an appearance in John Kendall's talk at the end of the session.

The highlight of the day, for me was David Bhella's Peter Wildy Lecture. David, who is clearly well rehearsed at talking to groups of fidgeting students with poor attention spans, kept me captivated the entire way through his presentation with mesmeric videos of spinning viral particles and DNA models. I have to admit, though, that watching one of his videos did feel like the closest I'll ever get to an LSD trip! At the end of his talk, I felt very really fired up to get back into the public domain and spread the word about microbes in a fun and engaging way!

Another bonus of the day was chatting to Vicki Symington at the SGM stand about the range of resources the SGM can provide members for educational purposes.

Tuesday
With the rumours of biscuits at coffee time I was re-enthused and ready for the morning session. The talks in the Metabolics section seemed more intensive than Monday's, but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Graham Stafford talking about sialic acid use by Tannerella forsythia, which lives in the gap between the teeth and the gums.

The SGM Prize Medal Lecture was given by (HRH) Harald zur Hausen - yes, the Nobel Prize winner! He talked about cancers caused by viruses which affect different parts of the world at different levels. The topic was somewhat bleak, and there were mutters as we left the auditorium about whether to eat beef in future. Despite the sobering nature of the lecture, it was really great to hear about real-life, applied virology and the impact virologists are having on the lives of humans around the world.

After lunch (with much more appropriate food levels - thanks SGM), it was back to the Metabolic Interface. The afternoon talks seemed to take a decidedly molecular turn and I was rapidly struggling to keep up, so I headed for the Co-Infection session at a convenient moment. All the talks I heard there were focused on Candida albicans (a fungus) and a bacterial partner in crime, bringing us back to the gore, with details about hospital-aquired infections, pictures of rotten tongues and nasty stories of systemic diseases. We even saw a video of a patient who'd be given a voicebox implant, and then were presented with information about how these implants can fail because of microbes which colonise their surface. My throat was closing up at the mere thought of it!

The last talk of the day was the Hot Topic Lecture, delivered by Paul O'Toole. This presentation made the entire meeting for me; I was frantically scribbling notes from start to finish! Paul was discussing the human microbiome, the population of microbes that each and every one of us carries around with us throughout our entire lives. These 'fellow travellers', as Paul called them, are hugely important for our bodies. I learned that 70% of the Bacteria living on our bodies cannot be cultured in the lab. That is staggering! It's only recently, since we've been able to study these microbes by getting sequence data from them, that we've been able to detect them at all, and yet they are as much a part of our bodies as our hearts or our skin!!

After the lecture, I was dying to ask Paul a question, but I was too far away, at the back of the auditorium, so I didn't dare put my hand up and yell all the way to the front. I didn't get to catch him in the drinks session afterwards, either, which is a big shame (for me - probably not so much for him!), but he was undoubtedly being swamped by adoring groupies! I did, however, bump into a former lecturer, Charles Penn, from my undergraduate days at the University of Birmingham - as well as some other familiar faces. I also managed to trap David Bhella into a conversation, while trying not to melt into a nonsensical, starstruck wreck! The conference, for me, ended with a girly gossip and catch up with a fellow Birmingham escapee who I used to attend aerobics classes with (of course!).

All in all, my first SGM conference was a great experience. It had the right blend of learning, networking and re-motivating me to get back into the lab and produce some groundbreaking research. I'm very much looking forward to going again next year...

Why is Microbiology Important?

What am I doing, banging on about microbes? Why do microbes matter?

The field of microbiology is relatively old, as science goes; the ancient Romans knew that some invisible life forms sometimes caused disease. However, unlike some other disciplines, the huge bulk of discoveries in microbiology have come about in the past 200 years. This rapid acceleration in learning was kick started in the 1600s when scientists like Kircher and van Leeuwenhoek used lenses to magnify, enabling us to see tiny microscopic creatures. Before this time, the only evidence we had of microbes was the effects they had on the world around us.


So, what are microbes?

A microbe (or micro-organism) is a living creature which is very very tiny. No, really - they're tiny!! Microbes are microscopic, which means they can't be seen with the naked eye; they can only be seen under a microscope.

Image provided by Ardelfin (www.morguefile.com/creative/ardelfin)

To put this in context: the species of Bacteria which I research, called Campylobacter concisus, is roughly 3 micrometres long - in other words three millionths of a metre, or 0.000003 metres. In some very quick (quite literally done on the back of an envelope) maths, I calculate that approximately 140000 bacterial cells could fit into the full stop at the end of this sentence.

Microbes are often unicellular (or single-celled) organisms. All living creatures are made of cells; complex animals like humans are made from trillions of cells which are specialised to do different jobs (like brain cells, blood cells and kidney cells). For unicellular microbes, each individual cell is a complete organism, and it must do everything required to survive: eat, move, sense danger and everything else they might require. Some microbes a multicellular; but even these are very small. The term 'microbe' covers things like Bacteria and Fungi, as well as unicellular animals like amoebae and algae. Microbes have evolved to live in almost every niche on the planet, and some are able to survive in extremely challenging environments.
 
Tiny cells, big business

Although the numbers are hard to find (and it's tough to get my brain to work after a day helping undergrads in the lab!), I estimate that microbes are worth many hundreds (if not thousands) of billions of pounds every year!!

 A big claim, but here's my logic:

• According to a report published by The Brewers of Europe, european beer sales were worth 106 billion Euros (£93.1 billion) in 2010 (www.brewersofeurope.org)
• ReportLinker says that the Vitamin and Supplements industry is worth $68 billion (£59.8 billion)
• US Drug companies represented by PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) invested $49.5 billion (£32.8 billion) in 2011 (http://www.phrma.org/about/about-phrma)

Since these industries, and many others, are intrinsically underpinned by microbes, the total yearly economic value of those teeny, tiny bugs works out as mega bucks! There's also the food industry which produces things like bread, quorn and Marmite with microbes; agriculture which relies on nitrogen-fixing Bacteria in the soil to grow crops; even your body needs microbes to keep your immune system in check and to stop harmful disease-causing microbes from colonising the body.

Image provided by Jusben (www.morguefile.com/creative/Jusben)

So, next time you're washing your hands, think carefully about those tiny, invisible, living organisms circling the plughole in a a swirl of soapy suds.