Conference Programme

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Day One

8.00 - 9.00:	Registration
9.00 - 9.10:	Welcome

Scientific Session 1: Control of bacterial virulence (chaired by David Grainger)

9.10 - 9.40:	Peggy Cotter (UNC Chapel Hill, USA) “Are contact-dependent inhibition (CDI) system-encoding genes facultative, multi-coloured greenbeards?”
9.40 - 9.55:	Jainaba Manneh (Birmingham, UK) “A general mechanism for control of Vibrio cholera gene expression in response to host colonisation”
9.55 - 10.10:	Kristine Arnvig (UCL, UK) “DrrS, a small RNA regulator of cell wall synthesis and secretion in Mycobacterium tuberculosis”
10.10 - 10.25:	Jonathan Pruneda (LMB, Cambridge, UK) “How pathogenic bacteria subvert the host ubiquitin system with CE clan effector proteins”
10.25 - 10.40:	Jessica Rooke (Birmingham, UK) “Understanding the interaction of the Salmonella autotransporter ApeE with host-derived lipids”
Coffee Break: Aston Webb Great Hall
11.20-11.35:	Winner of the Junior Award for Microbiology 2017 - Vera Pader (Imperial College, UK) (chaired by Peggy Cotter)

Scientific Session 2: Model organism gene expression and RNA biology (chaired by Ramesh Wigneshweraraj)

11.35-12.05:	Kai Papenfort (LMU München, Germany) “From strings of nucleotides to collective behaviour: lessons from Vibrio cholerae”
12.05-12.20:	Emma Denham (Warwick, UK) “Mapping the in vivo RNA interactome of the Gram Positive model organism Bacillus subtilis reveals new sRNA functions”
12.20-12.35:	Nancy Mulvenna (Imperial College, UK) “Host(ile) takeover: characterisation of four Bacillus subtilis phage SPO1 proteins implicated in host acquisition”
12.35-12.50:	Ángela Mérida-Floriano (Seville, Spain) “Heterogeneous expression of SOS regulon genes”
Lunch: Aston Webb Great Hall

Scientific Session 3: Controlling bacterial cell structure (chaired by Andy Lovering)

14.00-14.30:	Jeff Errington (Newcastle, UK) “Immune cells can protect bacteria from β-lactam killing by promoting an L-form switch”
14.30-14.45:	Joao Monteiro (ITQB, Lisbon, Portugal) “MurJ recruitment to the division septum drives peptidoglycan incorporation to midcell in Staphylococcus aureus”
14.45-15.00:	Calum Jukes (Newcastle, UK) “The great divide: how a motile cytoskeleton drives bacterial cell division”
15.00-15.15:	Gabriella Kelemen (UEA, UK) “Bacterial intermediate filament-like proteins in Streptomyces: assembly and function”
15.15-15.30:	Matt Bush (John Innes Centre, UK) “Multi-layered inhibition of Streptomyces development: BldO is a dedicated repressor of whiB”
Coffee Break: Aston Webb Great Hall

Scientific Session 4: Molecular biology of human pathogens 1 (chaired by David Roper)

16.00-16.30:	Jan-Willem Veening (Lausanne, Switzerland) “Identification of a unique cell cycle regulator in Streptococcus pneumoniae by en masse GFP localization, Tn-seq and CRISPRi phenotyping”
16.30-17.00:	Simon Dove (Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA) “Pervasive targeting of nascent transcripts by Hfq in Pseudomonas aeruginosa”
17.00 - 19.00:	Poster session
BBQ and Social: Biosciences Quad

Day Two

Scientific Session 5: Antibiotics and resistance mechanisms (chaired by Tracy Palmer)

9.10-9.40:	Gilles Van Wezel (Leiden, Netherlands) “Regulatory networks that control antibiotic production in Streptomyces”
9.40-9.55:	Prateek Sharma (Birmingham, UK) “Regulation and mechanisms of multiple antibiotic resistance in Escherichia coli”
9.55-10.10:	Georgia Isom (Birmingham, UK) “MCE domain proteins : conserved inner membrane lipid-binding proteins required for outer membrane homeostasis”
10.10-10.25:	Paul Hoskisson (Strathclyde, UK) “Expanding gene families helps generate the metabolic robustness required for antibiotic biosynthesis”
10.25-10.40:	Jess Blair (Birmingham, UK) “Targeting efflux pumps to combat antimicrobial resistance: the importance of functional redundancy”
Coffee Break: Aston Webb Great Hall

Scientific Session 6: Emerging paradigms in pathogen biology (chaired by Edward Wallace)

11.20-11.50:	Carmen Buchrieser (Institute Pasteur, France) “Post-transcriptional regulatory networks in Legionella pneumophila: key to the survival in extra-and intracellular environments”
11.50-12.05:	Helen O’Hare (Leicester, UK) “A novel mechanism of amino acid sensing in Mycobacterium tuberculosis”
12.05-12.20:	Merve Zeden (Imperial College, UK) “Uncovering the molecular mechanism for the requirement of CyclicDi-AMP for the growth of Staphylococcus aureus”
12.20-12.35:	Fatima Ulhuq (Dundee, UK) “A novel type VII substrate of Staphylococcus aureus”
12.35-12.50:	Robin May (Birmingham, UK) “How do phagocytes expel microbial invaders? Probing the mechanism of pathogen vomocytosis”
Lunch: Aston Webb Great Hall

Scientific Session 7: Replication and cell division (chaired by Stephen Price)

14.00-14.30:	Erin Goley (Johns Hopkins University, USA) “Cytoskeletal regulation of cell wall metabolism for division in Caulobacter crescentus”
14.30-14.45:	Estelle Crozat-Brendon (Cambridge, UK) “MatP acts as a cohesine and timer of Ter segregation in E. coli”
14.45-15.15:	Thorsten Allers (Nottingham, UK) “Life without DNA replication origins”
Coffee Break: Aston Webb Great Hall

Scientific Session 8: Molecular biology of human pathogens 2 (chaired by Bill Horsnell)

15.45-16.15:	M. Stephen Trent (University of Georgia, USA) “The Power of Asymmetry: Architecture and Assembly of the Gram-Negative Outer Membrane Lipid Bilayer”
16.15-16.30:	Sarah Sherrington (Birmingham, UK) “Adaptation to acidic environments induces unmasking of beta-glucan in Candida albicans”
16.30-17.00:	Miguel Valvano (Queens University Belfast, UK) “If you don't kill me I cheat: Bacterial antibiotic hijacking in the extracellular space”
Closing remarks