First in-person conference in a long time! The American Society of Microbiology yearly meeting (ASM Microbe 2022) took place in Washington DC June 9-12. Our small group (Andrea, Allison, and myself- the 3 As!) headed to the nation’s capital to attend.
It was great to be able to meet people in real life versus through Zoom screens. ASM did a good job trying to control Covid exposure. Besides vaccine/test requirements, masking was required throughout the event. Of course, sometimes the discipline was hard to maintain during reception times and social events, but as far as I know, only a few people reported getting Covid.
I confess we spent a lot of time in the Exhibit Hall, which also housed the poster sessions. It was fun to get updates on instrumentation, explore new tools, and then head to the poster boards and get updates on science.
Andrea’s poster got some extra attention, and it was featured in a ASM press release: https://asm.org/Press-Releases/2022/June/Plastic-Pollution-in-Ocean-May-Harbor-Novel-Antibi
So what is new from the results presented at SCASM?
- Following advice we were given there, we acquired from the CDC a panel of antibiotic resistant strains and started testing our producers. Some of our isolates have activity against antibiotic resistant Citrobacter freundii and Enterococcus faecalis. Due to safety concerns, this process is slower than our usual testing, so we have a few more to test.
- All antibiotic experts say that in order to move ahead with this project we need to figure out the chemistry of the antibiotic activity. So there have been a lot of organic extractions and the setup of a more quantitative activity test using 96-well plates. With it, some challenges of variable activity.
- Just days before the poster presentation we received sequencing data for a couple of our producers. One of them was ID-ed as Cobetia, which is interesting and unique.
The beauty of being surrounded by experts was the great number of advice and suggestions we received. It’s amazing how quickly questions are answered in an-in person setting instead of via interminable email threads. We took lots of notes, and hopefully we’ll be able to address them if/when things slow down a bit.
Stay tuned.
