News and Updates

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Abstracts now being accepted for SIMB’s 2012 Annual Meeting. (Due June 1, 2012) and Recent Advances in Microbial Control (Due September 1, 2012) First, read these tips to an effective abstract by Susan Bagley, Professor of Environmental Microbiology, Department of Biological Sciences at Michigan Technological University.

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What CONCISELY lets everyone know about your great research results? An Abstract! These are prepared for oral or poster presentations at meetings or for publications and can be very widely distributed through the Internet. Here are some tips on how to prepare an informative and useful abstract so that your research efforts can really be appreciated.

April 30-May 3, 2012  – Sheraton New Orleans Hotel

Register Today | Hotel & Travel | Job Fair

The SBFC program chairs have put together an impressive technical program that includes 19 sessions with one Special Topic evening session on international bioenergy center progress, as well as 2 large poster sessions. Technical topics span new biomass sources and sustainability, biomass recalcitrance and pretreatment, enzyme and microbial advances, new types of biofuels and infrastructure issues, bioprocessing, and biorefineries, and the bioenergy research center update. See session topics.

We look forward to you joining us in New Orleans! The Symposium coincides with the New Orleans Jazz Fest, an annual city-wide music festival. Make your reservations early at the Sheraton New Orleans. Visit meeting site for more info >>

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to begin serving the Society for Industrial Microbiology (SIM) as President for 2011-2012. SIM has been in existence since 1949 and continues to be the premier society for industrial microbiology and biotechnology.  Unlike some organizations which are about policy making and business dealing, SIM remains about presenting, publishing, and promoting quality science.  This will continue to be SIM’s mission during and long after my term as president.

Fifteen years ago the SIM annual meeting had loads of talks dealing with natural products (I knew the S. coelicolor ActI gene sequence by heart) and there was barely a talk on fuel ethanol to be found.  Now there are plenty of biofuel talks to go along with a healthy dose of natural products (and I no longer remember the ActI sequence).  So it begs the question, what will we be listening to at the 2025 annual meeting.  As I look into my crystal ball, the answer is…. in vitro meat cultivation.

These are meat products that are grown using tissue culture technologies in the lab and TIME magazine identified in vitro meat production as one of the top 50 breakthrough ideas of 2009.  This is not a vegetable protein-imitation; it is a product derived from culturing real animal muscle tissue cells.  Unfortunately we are not talking filet mignon or porter house; the product would be more like hamburger.

The benefits of in vitro meat cultivation include: ease of feeding a larger population, limited land use, more efficient water use, well defined quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced fuel vs. food decision making for food production.  During this past summer, a small group of scientists met in Gothenburg, Sweden (organized by Chalmers University of Technology and the European Science Foundation) to review the technology components necessary to reduce this concept to practice.  This included discussions on cell lines and culture medium nutrients derived from photosynthetic organisms such as cyanobacteria.

So at the 2025 annual meeting, a company may not simply provide money for the banquet, they may produce the entrée.

Essayons!

About Neal Connors
Dr. Neal Connors is currently the owner/president of Phoenix BioConsulting, LLC (www.phoenixbioconsulting.com); a company providing consulting services to the fermentation, industrial microbiology, biotechnology, and legal sectors.