100th American society for microbiology annual meeting

The 100th ASM Annual Meeting, attended by approximately 10,000 delegates, continued the trend of concentrating on bacteria and antibacterial therapy, mixed with genomics and a diverse number of additional topics. Of the various marketable drug classes, the quinolones received attention with respect to susceptibility studies and several drug comparison studies. New marketable drugs were also of interest, especially given the reservoirs of resistance presented by several speakers. Drugs in development include the antibacterial daptomycin and protegrins and the antifungal lipodepsinonapeptides and echinocandins, to name a few. It is still unclear whether or not antibiotic treatment regimens for Chlamydia pneumonia will he necessary, as association of this bacteria with several chronic diseases, such as atherosclerosis and asthma, was discussed. The development of novel antibiotics was highlighted and the potential role that microbial genomics technology could play was a recurring theme. In fact, a number of symposia treated the increasingly popular topic of genomics in a variety of themes, including phenotyping arrays, transcriptional profiling, proteomics, expression profiling, genome sequencing, target areas or essentiality of genes via gene knockout systems, the role of genomics in pharmaceutical development and fungal genomics. Similarly, genomics plays a role in developing a deeper appreciation for classical areas of interest in microbial physiology, such as gene regulation, cell division, fatty acid biosynthesis, DNA replication and cell signalling. Even in the bio-inorganic field of study in microbial metabolite activation, genomics plays a role. The sequencing of the large gene clusters of the auxiliary proteins necessary to synthesise or activate the metallo-proteins provided insights into the mechanisms of activation of these microbial enzymes, including the genes for the nif gene cluster in Azotobacter vinelandii, the urease from Kiebsiella aerogenes and the three hydrogenases in Ralstonia eutropha.