Sensing, Adaptation and Evolution in Microbes that Experience Stress

Free living organisms often experience a variety of environments. Some of these environments are potentially harmful. Thus, survival of the organism requires the ability to mount an appropriate response. This ability entails the capacity to sense a change in conditions taking place in the organism's surroundings. A change in conditions can also be detected by the consequences it has on cytosolic components. This information is then transmitted to a regulatory factor responsible for mounting an adaptive response. That is, the organism modifies the amount and/or the activity of the effectors enabling its survival under the stress being experienced.

Our meeting will explore the variety of stresses and responses that microbes experiences in abiotic as well as host-associated environments. It will discuss responses at atomic resolution as well as at the multi-cellular level. The meeting will examine both the mechanistic basis for the behaviors adopted by bacteria under stress as well as the evolution of these strains. In addition, it will investigate how the increasing knowledge of bacterial physiology and stress response can be harnessed for applications that can be of practical use to society in general.

Attendees are encouraged to present posters of their most exciting research. Oral presenters will be selected from the submitted abstracts.