Programme 2024

Opening by Clara Belzer

One or two membranes? Evolution of the cell envelope across Bacteria

Simonetta Gribaldo (France)

Short biography:
Simonetta Gribaldo is full professor and Head of the Unit Evolutionary Biology of the Microbial Cell at the Department of Microbiology, Institut Pasteur, Paris. She is an established figure in the field of large-scale microbial evolution, with an original and broad vision on the whole Tree of Life. Professor Gribaldo has significantly impacted the of Microbiology and challenged widely held paradigms. Recently, she has taken up the challenge of setting up an experimental laboratory to complement her bioinformatics studies. Since then, she has contributed seminal insights on the evolution of the bacterial cell envelope. Notably, she has inferred an ancient origin of the outer membrane and multiple transitions from Gram-negatives to Gram-positives. To test in-silico generated hypotheses, Professor Gribaldo has developed a new experimental model, the diderm Firmicute Veillonella parvula.

Westerdijk Award ceremony & Van Leeuwenhoek Award ceremony

Usage of AI to detect AMR in the lab

Adrian Egli (Switzerland)

Short biography:
After studying medicine at the University of Basel (MD 1998 – 2004, PhD thesis 2006 – 2008) at the University of Basel, Adrian Egli went abroad for a Clinical Fellowship “Transplant Infectious Disease” as well as a Post-doctoral fellowship, Li Ka Shing Institute for Virology (2010 – 2011), both at the University of Alberta, Canada. Back in Switzerland, he became a fellow in Clinical Microbiolgy (FAMH) (2012 – 2015) at the University Hospital of Basel. During the same period (11/2014 – to date) he was appointed as Research Group Leader “Applied Microbiology Research” in the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel. Finally, in November 2019, he became a Professor. Between September 2015 to July 2022, he held the position as Head of Department, Clinical Microbiology at the University Hospital of Basel. Starting in August 2022, he was appointed as the new Director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology, University of Zürich, a position that he is still holding at present.

Do undiagnosed, asymptomatic and symptomatic Chlamydia trachomatis infections result in similar sequelae? Results of the NECCST study

Zoïe Alexiou (RIVM)

Overview of evidence regarding the management of extragenital Chlamydia trachomatis

Petra Wolffs (GGD Zuid-Limburg)

Exploring the unexpected increase of Neisseria gonorhoeae infections in young women

Hélène Zondag (GGD Amsterdam/Amsterdam UMC)

Association between genotypic and phenotypic antibiotic resistance in Mycoplasma genitalium strains

Nikki Adriaens (GGD Amsterdam/Amsterdam UMC)

Carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa in humans, the hospital environment and the water chain in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Anneloes van Veen (Erasmus mc)

Nosocomial transmission of NDM-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae ST147 in a Dutch pediatric cancer center associated with patients from Ukraine

Wouter Smit (UMC Utrecht)

Interspecies interactions of cystic fibrosis-associated pathogens alter antibiotic pharmacodynamics

Annika Koumans (Leiden University)

Looking beyond the parent drug: A study of the contribution of TBAJ-876 and its TBAJ-876-M3-metabolite to the total bactericidal activity in a tuberculosis mouse model

Saskia Mudde (Erasmus mc)

Mycobacterium bovis infection of Dutch domestic cats resulting in human exposure

Susanna Commandeur (Wageningen Bioveterinary Research)

Computational & experimental models of microbial ecosystems

Karoline Faust (KU Leuven)

Enabling next-generation biorefineries with synthetic communities and (synthetic) biofilms

Pieter Candry (WUR)

Probiotics and the metabolic activity in a synthetic small intestinal community

Sahar El Aidy (RUG)

Disentangling the formation of the infant gut microbiota through synthetic communities

Athanasia Ioannou (WUR)

Embracing the mycobacterial wall-deficient lifestyle: Unveiling secrets through transcriptomics

Noortje Dannenberg (Leiden University)

Unraveling the chromosome of a predator: a dramatic shift in chromosome organization goes hand in hand with transcriptional changes in Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus

Renske van Raaphorst (University of Groningen)

Structure and function of a putative water channel in Bacillus subtilis germinant receptor protein GerAB

Longjiao Chen (University of Amsterdam)

The two-component system ArlRS is essential for wall teichoic acid glycoswitching in Staphylococcus aureus

Marieke Kuijk (Amsterdam UMC)

Functional profiling of CHAP domain-containing peptidoglycan hydrolases of Staphylococcus aureus USA300 uncovers potential targets for anti-staphylococcal therapies

Xiaofang Li (University of Groningen)

Novel insights and perspectives using bacterial single-cell RNA-seq

Christina Homberger (Switzerland)

Towards single-molecule protein sequencing with nanopores

Xiuqi Chen (University of Delft)

Metagenomic and transcriptome sequencing in paediatric liver explant cases; a quest for the aetiopathogenesis of severe acute hepatitis

Ellen Carbo (Amsterdam umc)

Uncovering the Role of IgA-coated Bacteria: Establishing an Improved High-Throughput IgA-SEQ Protocol

Merel van Gogh (UMC Utrecht)

Climate change – A microbe’s perspective

Annelies Veraart (Radboud University)

Lessons from climate warriors: the role of fungi in a planetary crisis

Emilia Hannula (Leiden University)

Cyanobacterial cell factories: turning CO2 into circular chemicals

Aniek van der Woude (Photanol)

Climate change and infectious diseases

George Sips (GGD Rotterdam-Rijnmond)

Lessons learned from the South East Asia encephalitis project

Marc Lecuit (France)

Unravelling the immune response against rabies virus

Corine Geurts van Kessel (Erasmus mc)

Diagnosis and treatment of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), an emerging disesase?

Rik de Swart (Wageningen Bioveterinary Research)

Waning of monkeypox virus-specific antibodies one year after MVA-BN vaccination

Luca Zaeck (Erasmus MC)

Collateral sensitivity-informed antibiotic combinations impact the de novo emergence of resistance

Apostolos Liakopoulos (University of Utrecht)

Ecological determinants of antibiotic resistance evolution

Marjon de Vos (RUG)

How the population size determines antibiotic resistance evolution

Arjan de Visser (WUR)

De novo acquisition of antibiotic resistance in six species of bacteria

Xinyu Wang (University of Amsterdam)

Advancing our knowledge of phage-host interactions for the benefit of science and society

Lone Brøndsted (Denmark)

Phage proteins activate anti-viral defense in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Aswin Muralidharan (TU Delft)

Bacteriophage therapy reduces bacterial load in Staphylococcus aureus burn wounds infections in an ex vivo human skin model

Bouke Boekema (Association of Dutch Burn Centres)

Candida auris outbreak and (lack of) control Europe

Joseph Meletiadis (Greece)

An emerging dermatophyte epidemic: Genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics of the T. mentagrophytes complex

Chao Tang (Radboudumc)

SWAB guideline invasive mycosis: is it time to revise?

Bart Rijnders (Erasmus mc)

New antifungal agents

Jochem Buil (Radboud umc)

Akkermansia muciniphila drives mucin glycan degradation in a cooperative synthetic in vitro mucosal microbial community of the human gut

Maryse Berkhout (Wageningen University and Research)

Effect of sulfide on the microbiome of the green alga Caulerpa prolifera

Anastasiia Barilo (University of Amsterdam)

Synthetic community mitigates ammonia emissions produced by livestock fecal microbiota

Liu Jun (Wageningen University and Research)

Membrane changes during syntrophic growth of an archaeal/bacterial consortium: a model for eukaryogenesis

Kerstin Fiege (Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research)

Engineered acetogens for use in synthetic co-cultures

Maximilian Flaiz (Wageningen University and Research)

The synthetic yeast project and its tRNA neochromosome

Daniel Schindler (MPI Marburg)

Synthetic metabolism for sustainable cell factories

Lyon Bruinsma (WUR)

De novo genome design and assembly for a minimal synthetic cell

Celine Cleij (TU Delft)

Anti-Staphylococcal antibodies effectively potentiate complement activation and phagocytosis of Coagulase Negative Staphylococci in term and preterm neonatal cordblood

Coco Beudeker (UMC Utrecht)

Frontline immunity against Streptococcus pyogenes by human Langerhans cells

Sara Tamminga (Amsterdam UMC)

The capsule serotype of Streptococcus pneumoniae affects respiratory epithelial cytokine responses and downstream immune activation

Esther van Woudenbergh (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment)

Fusobacterium nucleatum-released ADP-heptose upregulates PD-L1 in intestinal epithelial cells via the activation of ALPK1

Coco Duizer (UMC Utrecht)

Salmonella enterocyte invasion through MUC1: contributions of the extracellular domain and cytoplasmic tail to invasion and signaling

Jinyi Su (Utrecht University)

Antimicrobial resistance: the future challenge How can material technology help curb AMR? The DARTBAC project

Chris Arts (TUE)

Mosquito alert project; a citizen science project by technasium students to investigate vector borne diseases

Wilco Zwennis (technasium) & Eefje Schrauwen (Avans Hogeschool)

Micro-monsters around you – how do we get microbiology in primary school?

Tycho Malmberg (NIBI)

On specialists and generalists: social microbes dominate microbiomes

Bastiaan von Meijenfeldt (NIOZ)

Context dependency of community ecology and keystone species in a synthetic gut bacterial community

Anna Weiss (ETH Zurich)

Rational bottom-up design of complex microbial consortia

Juan Díaz Colunga (University of Salamanca)

Complex seroprofiles in hepatitis B

Hans Zaaijer (Sanquin)

Prevention of HBV reactivation after organ transplantation

Marjolein Knoester (UMCG)

HCV resistance testing: when to test and what are the implications?

Janke Schinkel (Amsterdamumc)

New developments in HBV and HDV treatment

Milan Sonneveld (Erasmus mc)

Composotion of the microbiome and the role of the environment

R.K. Weersma (UMCG)

Increase of Parkinson Disease and its possible associations

T. van Laar (UMCG)

Can fecal metagenomcis predicts Parkinson Disease development and progression?

George Zeller (Germany)

Is feces microbiota transplantation for patients with Parkinson disease a new promising treatment? Results of a pilot study

Jofrey van Prehn (LUMC)

Chemical imaging-based insights into the human gut microbiome drug interaction network

Michael Wagner (Austria)

Short biography:
Michael Wagner is full professor for Microbial Ecology at the University of Vienna, Austria and a Distinguished Professor (20%) at Aalborg University, Denmark. He was the founding director of the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental System Science (CeMESS), which is a 2019 founded new faculty at the University of Vienna. His main research interests are single cell methods in microbiology and nitrogen-cycle microbiology. His team developed several innovative chemical imaging methods for directly studying functional properties of individual microbial cells within complex microbiomes. Recently, they spearheaded the application of these techniques to investigate drug-microbe interactions in the human gut. In the nitrogen cycle field, he discovered together with colleagues in 2015 complete nitrifying microbes (so-called comammox organisms) demonstrating that nitrification is not always a two-step process. Subsequently, they showed that comammox organisms are green nitrifiers producing much less nitrous oxide than classical ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. Michael Wagner has been continuously recognized as a highly cited scientist since 2014 and received an ERC Advanced Grant as well as the Wittgenstein award (the highest science award in Austria). In 2023 he became director of one of the five Austrian Clusters of Excellence entitled “Microbiomes drive Planetary Health“ in which 30 PIs from 8 leading Austrian research institutions focus on environmentally and medically relevant microbiomes.

Kiem Award ceremony

How has NGS reshaped tuberculosis diagnostics and understanding of the disease

Daniela Cirillo (Italy)

Short biography:
Daniela Maria Cirillo MD, PhD, Clinical Microbiologist, Head of the Emerging Bacterial Pathogen Research unit and Deputy Director of the Division of Immunology, Transplant, and Infectious Diseases at IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan. Head of TB Supranational reference laboratory. Dr. Cirillo’s research focus is on mechanisms detection of drug resistance in MDROs of nosocomial origin and mycobacteria, ECOFFs definition for new antibiotics and application of NGS based technology in clinical microbiology. Areas of expertise: clinical mycobacteriology, next generation sequencing based diagnostic tools, research on new diagnostics for TB Infection and disease, in vivo and in vitro models to study TB/NTMs pathogenesis.

Insights from NGS-based surveillance of tuberculosis

Richard Anthony (RIVM)

NGS for tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacterial disease diagnostics in a reference center

Jakko van Ingen (Radboudumc)

Lessons learned: Practical implementation of NGS

Suzan Pas (Radboudumc)

In-house pipeline provides robust and rapid genomic drug resistance predictions of clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates

Ingrid van Weerdenburg (Radboudumc)

Hidden eaters: How chemosynthetic symbionts thrive in organosulfur-rich environments

Eileen Kroeber (Germany)

Unveiling microbe-microbe interactions and detoxifying symbiosis in microbiota of Nezara viridula

Silvia Coolen (Radboud University)

Cultivation of a novel organism in the candidate phylum Cloacimonadota

Maaike Besteman (Wageningen University)

Archaeal Parisitism - Insights into the Interactions Between Ca. Nha. antarcticus and Hrr. Lacusprofundi

Joshua Hamn (Royal Netherlands Institute For Sea Research)

Community outbreak with Panton-Valentine Leukocidin-encoding livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the Netherlands

Patrick van Schelven (Public Health Service region Utrecht)

The added value of a regional, prospective whole genome sequencing based surveillance for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) outbreak detection in five hospitals in the Netherlands

Veronica Weterings (Amphia Hospital)

Is LA-MRSA still livestock-associated?

Engeline van Duijkeren (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment)

Needles in a haystack: Identifying new human genetic etiologies underlying severe Staphylococcus aureus infections

Barathram Swaminathan (UMC Utrecht)

A hospital outbreak with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus argenteus in the Netherlands, June 2023

Serena Slavenburg (Regional Public Health Laboratory Kennemerland)

Environmental friendly methods to combat the citrus canker pathogen Xanthomonas citri

Henrique Ferreira (Brazil)

Enhancing plant resistance to pests via the soil microbiome

Joana Falcão Salles (University of Groningen)

Antagonism or Synergy: Unraveling the intertwined relationship between Bacillus, and Trichoderma against plant pathogens

Jiyu Xie (Leiden University)

Plasmids as cross-ecological sources of resistance

Alessandra Carattoli (Italy)

Spread of resistance plasmids among humans, animals and the environment, in The Netherlands

Gijs Teunis (RIVM)

Genomic surveillance of multidrug-resistant organisms based on long-read sequencing

Fabian Landman (RIVM)

Antimicrobial susceptibility to last-resort antibiotics in carbapenemase-producing bacteria from Ukrainian patients

Nelianne Verkaik (Erasmus MC)

Uncovering mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions using CRISPRi-seq

Jan-Willem Veening

Elucidating the microbiota glycome using nature’s own glycan sensors

Rob van Dalen (Amsterdam umc)

Unraveling ecological and evolutionary processes in infectious microbial communities

Marjon de Vos (RUG)

Casus 1

Rosalie Zimmermann (Amsterdamumc)

Casus 2

Dimard Foudraine (Erasmus MC)

Casus 3

Mohamed el Bouaalate (OLVG)

Large-scale computational analyses of gut microbial CAZyme repertoires enabled by Cayman

Quinten Ducarmon (European Molecular Biology Laboratory)

Uncovering the origin and evolution of oxygen-impermeable membranes in multicellular cyanobacteria

Bastiaan Von Meijenfeldt (Royal Netherlands Institute For Sea Research)

Mapping the Glycan Landscape: A Genomic Approach to Unravel Extracellular Polymeric Substance Biosynthesis in Environmental Micro-organisms

S. van Eerden (Delft University of Technology)

Unveiling the hidden world of bacterial membrane-spanning lipids: Adaptive responses, and novel insights for branched GDGT production in the environment

Diana Sahonero Canavesi (Royal Netherlands Institute For Sea Research)

Alterations of glycan composition in aerobic granular sludge during the adaptation to seawater conditions

Le Min Chen (Delft University of Technology)

E. coli meet your match: Production of monoclonal antibodies from E. coli-specific B cells to combat bacterial infections

Kulsum Dawoodbhoy (UMC Utrecht)

Flumequine, a fluoroquinolone in disguise

Aram Swinkels (Utrecht University)

Novel cell platforms to valorize carbon dioxide into fine chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry

Sara Cantera (University of Valladolid)

Prediction of clinical outcome of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infection using Machine Learning

Julian Paganini (Utrecht University)

Automated surveillance of hospital onset bacteraemia: first results

Manon Brekelmans (UMC Utrecht)