Microbiology

This track focuses on the spectrum of fungi that infects humans. In previously healthy individuals, invasive fungal disease is rare because animals’ sophisticated immune systems evolved in constant response to fungal challenges. In contrast, fungal diseases occur frequently in immunocompromised patients. Paradoxically, successes of modern medicine have put increasing numbers of patients at risk for invasive fungal infections.

Subtracks:

1. Fungal evolution, phylogenetics, genomics, development, and pathogenesis

2. Fungi that infect healthy Humans, Entomophthoromycota, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota.

3. Fungi that infect Immunocompromised humans Ascomycota, Basidiomycota and Mucorales

4. Non-Fumigatus Aspergilli, Fusarium, Pseudoallescheria, and other opportunistic Ascomycetous fungal pathogens

Virology, a subfield of microbiology or of medicine covering all aspects of new and reemerging viruses that cause severe and/or lethal diseases in humans and animals. Examples of these viruses include filoviruses (Ebola, Marburg), henipaviruses (Nipah, Hendra), Lassa virus, Lujo virus, South American hemorrhagic fever viruses (Junin, Machupo, Guanarito, Chapare, Sabia), Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, Rift Valley fever virus, hantaviruses, SARS coronavirus, MERS coronavirus, tick-borne encephalitis viruses, and Zika virus.

Subtracks:

1. Veterinary Virology

2. Medical Virology

3. Viral Oncology

4. Respiratory Viral Infections5. Current Focus in Virology Research

One of our major health challenges today is the rising tide of antimicrobial resistance, with the emergence of "untreatable" microbes causing diseases that were once readily treatable. Find information regarding new antimicrobial agent discovery, preclinical investigations of new antimicrobial drugs in the pipeline, and first-look data of human clinical trials using new antimicrobial agents.

Subtracks:

1. Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance: Molecular Typing, Clinical & Molecular Epidemiology

2. Antimicrobial Agents: Mechanisms of Action & Mechanisms of Resistance

3. Antifungal Agents & Resistance

4. Antiviral Agents (including HIV Drugs) and Resistance

5. Antimicrobial Stewardship, including Quality of Care

6. Novel Approaches: Therapies, Diagnostics and Drug Discovery

7. Antimicrobial Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and General Pharmacology

The most exciting findings in this field in the last few years will be presented including recent, game-changing discoveries of microbial players and physiologies in the major biogeochemical cycles, microbial interactions, and electromicrobiology and synthetic microbiology.Subtracks:

1. Biofilms in Applied and Environmental Science

2. Biofuels and Bioproducts

3. Bioremediation, Biodegradation, Biofouling and Biocorrosion

4. Fermentation and Biotransformation

5. Synthetic Biology

6. New Microbial Processes for Resource Recovery, Carbon Capture and Resource efficiency

7. Geomicrobiology

8. Aeromicrobiology

9. Electromicrobiology

The track is organized into three thematic sessions: Soil Microbiology, Water Microbiology, and Environmental Biotechnology. The first sessions includes researches on soil as a habitat for microorganisms, and introduces the main types of soil microorganisms, how they interact with the soil, and the techniques used in their analysis. In the second section includes Freshwater, Wastewater, and Drinking Water Microbiology and assays of microbial pathogens-bacteria, viruses, and protozoan parasites which are used in food and water quality control as well as an exercise in applied bioremediation of contaminants in water. Environmental Microbiology also includes the study of microorganisms that exist in artificial environments such as bioreactors.

Subtracks:

1. Soil Microbiology

2. Water Microbiology

3. Detecting, Characterization, and Source-tracking of Environmental Microbes

4. Microbiology of the Built Environment

5. Genetic and Metabolic Functions in Environmentally Relevant Microbes

We are in the era of speed and precision. Like many other disciplines in environmental biology, aquatic microbiology tends to move forward with new rapid and cutting edge tools to study water-related microorganisms from river banks to the abyss of the oceans. These innovations help to resolve the issues with determining the risks associated with climate change, human activities as well as the interactions between species to redefine what a healthy water environment is for all living organisms sharing these environments.

Subtracks:

1. Aquatic Microorganisms

2. Techniques for the study of Aquatic Microorganisms

3. Distribution of Microorganisms in the Aquatic Environment

4. The role and importance of Aquatic Microbial Ecosystems

5. Productivity of Aquatic Ecosystems6. Biogeochemical Transformations

7. Bacterial indication of water pollution

8. Inorganic nitrogen assimilation in aquatic microorganisms

9. Freshwater, Wastewater, Drinking Water and Marine Microbiology

The latest information on common healthcare-associated infections, such as Clostridium difficile, pneumonia, and complicated urinary tract infections, will be featured. The science in this track works to bring together angstrom-level discovery and clinical research to reduce the burden of infectious diseases around the globe.

Subtracks:

1. Clinical Studies of Adult Infectious Diseases, including Clinical Trials and Diseases caused by Bacteria, Viruses, Fungi, Prions or Parasites

2. Infection Prevention and Control: Healthcare-associated and Surgical Infections and Clinical Epidemiology

3. Global Health

4. Transplant Infectious Diseases

5. Pediatric Infectious Diseases6. Vaccines and Immunization Science

Delve into the science of antibiotic susceptibility testing: new protocols, new drug panels, new drugs in the pipeline, and new organisms to test. Sessions will also deep dive into testing and treatment of Clostridium difficile, a clinically important microbe with growing incidence.

Subtracks:

1. Administering the Clinical/Public Health Microbiology Laboratory

2. Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing

3. Diagnostic Bacteriology

4. Diagnostic Immunology

5. Diagnostic Mycobacteriology

6. Diagnostic Mycology

7. Diagnostic Parasitology

8. Diagnostic Public Health Microbiology

9. Diagnostic Veterinary Microbiology

10. Diagnostic Virology

11. Laboratory Safety, Security and Biodefense

12. Molecular Diagnostic Microbiology

13. Practical Tools for Bench Technologists

14. Global Health Practices and Impact

15. Laboratory Informatics

Microbial Ecology and Evolution encompasses many aspects of microbial and phage ecology and the roles of microbes in their natural environments. Our rapidly advancing knowledge of the complexity, immense diversity, and important roles of natural microbial communities will be highlighted in many of the exciting sessions.

Subtracks:

1. Microbial Ecology

2. Microbial Evolution and Comparative Genomics

3. Microbial Biodiversity and Systematics

Sessions on studying phages, conflict and resolution in evolution, bacterial warfare within the host, and more will cover the cutting-edge biology in the field.

Subtracks:

1. Animal Infections

2. Genetic and Physiological Adaptation to the Host

3. Cell and Tissue Responses to Microbes

4. Cellular/Molecular Host-Microbe Interactions

5. Invasion and Survival in Host Cells

6. Manipulations of Host Functions by Microbes

7. Microbe-Plant Interactions

8. Microbial Symbioses with Invertebrate Hosts

9. Microbiome-Host Interactions

10. Phage-Host Interactions

11. Polymicrobial Pathogenicity and Symbiosis

12. Inflammation and Immunity

13. Surface Structures of Pathogenic Microbes

14. Toxins and Secreted Factors

15. Virulence Regulatory Mechanisms

16. Virus-Host Interactions

17. Microbial Metabolism and Host Association

18. Anti-Pathogen Strategies

19. Vaccine Development

20. Eukaryotic Microbe-Host Interactions

Molecular and Biology and Physiology covers the full spectrum of molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie microbiological phenomena. The shared emphasis in the various sub-tracks is to achieve a detailed mechanistic understanding of microbial life at the cellular and molecular level.

Subtracks:

1. Structural Biology and Assembly of Complexes

2. Computational Genomics, Databases and Modeling

3. Biology of Eukaryotic Microbes

4. Gene Regulation and Microbial Stress Responses

5. Genome Dynamics, including Replication, Repair and Recombination

6. Development and Growth of Microbial Cells

7. Metabolism, Enzyme Mechanics and Physiology

8. Biofilms

9. Motility

10. Tools for Genetics and Genomics

11. Phage and Viruses

12. Protein Secretion and Microbial Cell Surfaces

Industrial microbiology is primarily associated with the commercial exploitation of microorganisms, and involves processes and products that are of major economic, environmental and gregarious consequentiality throughout the world.

Subtracks:

1. Industrial Processes end products

2. Bioprocess Engineering and Systems Biology

3. Microfactories: Microbial Production of Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals

4. Biosurfactants: Purification, Mass Production, Applications

5. Biotechnologically relevant Enzymes and Proteins

6. Quantitative Models and Bioinformatics in Microbiology

7. Application of -Omics Technologies in Microbial Fermentation

Exciting developments in Food Microbiology has been the availability and application of molecular analyses that have allowed scientists to address microbial food safety questions beyond merely determining whether particular pathogens are in a food. Such global analyses are allowing scientists to ask deeper questions regarding food-borne pathogens and are currently leading the way to ascertaining the genes, proteins, networks, and cellular mechanisms that determine the persistence of strains in foods and other environments, determine why certain strains are more commonly isolated from foods, and determine why certain strains are more pathogenic. Such molecular tools are also making it possible to more fully determine the microflora present in foods along with pathogens, and to assess the effect that the food microbiota has on the death, survival, and pathogenicity of food borne pathogens.

Subtracks:

1. Foodborne Pathogens

2. Microbiology of Food, including Spoilage, Fermentation and Probiotics

Plant Pathology outlines how to recognize, treat, and prevent plant diseases. It covers the wide spectrum of abiotic, fungal, viral, bacterial, nematode and other plant diseases and their associated epidemiology. It also covers the genetics of resistance and modern management on plant disease.

Subtracks:

1. Microbiology of Agricultural System

2. Parasitism and disease development

3. Effects of pathogens on plant physiological functions

4. Genetics of plant disease

5. How pathogens attack plants And How plants defend themselves against pathogens

6. Plant Diseases caused by Fungi, Prokaryotes, Viruses, Nematodes, Flagellate Protozoa, Parasitic Higher Plants, Invasive higher plants, and Parasitic green plants

7. Control of plant diseases

This track is everybody's track. No matter what area of microbiology you work in and what stage in your career you're at, the topics covered in this session are things you can use right away in your own practice, from improving your communication and teaching skills to getting out in the community and being an advocate for the microbial sciences!

Subtracks:

1. Microbiology Education

2. Microbiology Communication and Outreach

3. Career and Professional Development

4. Microbiology Research and Policy Environments

5. History of Microbiology