Members Newsletter November 2016 
​International Society for Microbial Ecology     3/4     

 

 

Intro by the new ISME president!

It is a great pleasure and privilege to take over as President of ISME in these exciting times for the Society and microbial ecology. Thanks go to Janet Jansson for her guidance and leadership over her two years as President of ISME and for her continued support over the next two years as Past President. Farewell to former Past President Michael Wagner for his sterling service and tremendous contributions over the past six years on the ISME Executive and indeed for his work on the ISME Board prior to that (2004-2010). A big welcome to Ed DeLong as our incoming Vice President of ISME. We look forward to working closely with you in the years ahead. I also thank retiring ISME Board Members Rudi Amann and Satoshi Okabe for all of their hard work and input on the ISME Board since 2012. We are in the process of appointing new Board Members to succeed them and ISME Members will be able to vote for their successors early in the New Year.

ISME16 in Montreal in August was a tremendous conference and our biggest yet with 2219 attendees who enjoyed a fantastic week of science in an excellent convention centre, a great social programme and the opportunity to explore the wonderful city of Montreal. Our thanks go to Richard Villemur, Lyle White and the Local Organizing Committee for all of their hard work in making this possible and also to Sabine van Wegen, Sarash de Wilde and Nina Koele from the ISME Office. Their tireless efforts behind the scenes ensured the smooth running of the Conference, for which we are very grateful.

The Local Organising Committee for ISME17 led by Hauke Harms is working hard towards planning for the next ISME Conference in Leipzig in 2018 and I was delighted to be able to announce in Montreal that the bid for ISME 18 was awarded to Cape Town, South Africa. This is especially exiting because this is the first time that ISME will take the Conference to Africa. Congratulations to Don Cowan and his team for their success in winning the bid against stiff competition from several other countries and we also look forward to working over the coming years with the LOC for ISME 18 in Cape Town in 2020.

The ISME Ambassador Programme, led by ISME Board Member, Nicole Webster goes from strength to strength with Ambassadors and Young Ambassadors being appointed for a number of new countries. Their role is to work with ISME in helping to promote microbial ecology across the world and we hope to be announcing several new developments in this respect in the next few ISME Newsletters. Watch this space! Hearty congratulations go to Endalkachew Wolde-Meskel from Ethiopia and Thulani Makhalanyane from South Africa who were our ISME Ambassadors of the Year for 2015-2016. You can read more about them and their activities and initiatives in Africa below.


​Colin Murrell

ISME Demerger

Earlier this year the ISME members voted to separate The ISME Journal from the Association. Soon after that we started the process and in the last few months the “demerger proposal” was approved by the International Board of ISME, the ISME accountant’s office and a Dutch notary. The proposal documents have been submitted to the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday 27 September 2016 for review. 

The next step, and the most important one, is to ask the ISME Members to approve the demerger proposal and the Association by-law changes too. All members will therefore receive a personal invite by e-mail to attend an electronic meeting where the demerger proposal will be discussed and voted on. Upon request a copy of the proposal can already be made available but it will also be sent along with the invite.

For those members who joined ISME later on in the year, we would like to emphasize that the reason behind the demerger is a pure fiscal one:

  • The ISME Journal is creating profit (the amount fluctuates per year) and this profit must be taxed under Dutch law.
  • The ISME society itself is a tax-exempt non-profit association and wishes to maintain this status.
  • Separating the journal and placing it into a new entity, a limited company, making it easier to only pay tax on the journal-related costs and thus keeping the rest of the Society fully non-profit   and tax exempt.
  • ISME will remain full owner of the ISME Journal limited company.
  • After tax, the profits of the ISME Journal will be donated to ISME thereby allowing funds to flow back to the Society.

And now we need the approval of our members once more. An Electronic Members Meeting is coming soon.
Please join us!

On 23 November at 4PM GMT+1 (Amsterdam time) we will hold an electronic members meeting. All members will get a personal e-mail invitation (together with a copy of the demerger proposal) to join a webinar via GoToMeeting where the executives of ISME will present the proposal and answer your questions (with a live chat function and a moderator) in presence of a notary. At the end of the presentation we will ask all participants to vote on the proposal via a poll. 

Ambassadors of the year

At ISME16 Montreal, we hosted a wonderful Ambassador’s reception to celebrate and share all of the local activities undertaken by our ISME Ambassadors over the past 2 years. We said farewell to our outgoing representatives, welcomed our new representatives, including the 26 new ISME young Ambassadors and celebrated the expansion of the program into Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Greece & Portugal. We also reflected on the allocation of over €10,000 to support various microbial ecology activities in Uruguay, UK, Switzerland, Israel, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Colombia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, Czech Republic, Spain, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and France. Finally, we celebrated the achievements of our 2 Ambassadors of the year:  Endalkachew Wolde-Meskel from Ethiopia and Thulani Makhalanyane from South Africa:​
 

Endalkachew Wolde-meskel

Endalkachew is a scientist at ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute) and country coordinator for N2Africa project in Ethiopia “Putting Nitrogen Fixation to Work for Smallholder Farmers in Africa”.


He joined ILRI from Hawassa University in Ethiopia where he was an Associate Professor of Soil Microbiology at the School of Plant and Horticultural Sciences. He obtained his PhD from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). His main expertise is on rhizobiology and on the N2-fixing symbiosis in legumes. But also on nutrient cycling; on selection and identification of elite N fixing strains; on ecology of indigenous and naturalized rhizobial populations aiming on enhancing N2 fixation in farming systems. He coordinated north-south collaborative projects on legume-rhizobium symbiosis and on investigations involving cyanobacteria for use as bio-fertilizer on horticultural crops. He has co-authored and published large number of articles in pear reviewed international journals. He has extensive experience on exploration of biodiversity of rhizobia, identified (together with co-workers) several novel genospecies and described new species (DOI 10.1099/ijs.0.044032-0).  Endalkachew has supervised over 50 graduate students, covering a wide range of thesis research topics in his profession.

 

 

Exciting developments

1. The BGMF funded “Research for Development” project, where he is currently leading in Ethiopia, opened up an opportunity in that findings from rhizobial research in the lab taken out to field scale application to benefit tens and thousands of smallholder farmers growing legume crops. Elite strains, with a high capacity for N fixation, prepared as seed inoculants for target grain legumes, thus enhancing crop yields while improving soil fertility for subsequent crops. It is exciting to see “Rhizobia/microsymbionts/ in action”, bringing about intensification of crop-livestock systems, better income and increased nutritional quality (food and feed)

2. The establishment of the Ethiopian Society for Microbiology (ESM) is an important recent development, bringing together large number of microbiologists working in different institutions (universities, hospitals, industries and research institutions) in the country. Its 1st annual conference was held from 17 – 18 April, 2015 under the theme “Microbes in Human Welfare” while the 2nd annual conference was conducted from May 6 – 7, 2016 under the theme “Biodiversity Conservation to ensure Food Security and Industrial Application”. In these events, ESM brought together 175 and 198 microbiology professionals, respectively. ESM has provided and continue to be an important platform for the microbiologists in the country to share microbiological research findings (both oral and poster), new developments in the discipline globally and for making international linkages. ESM has managed to establish its own Journal (Journal of Ethiopian Society for Microbiology, J Ethiop Soc. Microbiol.) to encourage young researchers to publish their findings. ISME has left its foot-print by providing financial support to ESM during its establishment, to conduct its 1st annual conference.

 

Thulani Makhalanyane

Thulani is a South African microbial ecologist, with an interest on understanding the ecogenomics of hot and cold desert edaphic ecosystems. These habitats include soil microbial communities in the Antarctic Dry Valleys, the Namib Desert and now increasingly focused on South African habitats subject to desertification.

I have co-authored over 25 papers in leading journals within the field of microbial ecology, including the ISME J (Makhalanyane et al., 2013). I currently work as a lecturer in the Department of Genetics, supervise a number of postgraduate students and give lectures on microbial ecology to undergraduates. South Africa currently has a number of exciting developments broadly linked to the field of microbial ecology, such as new initiatives on capacity development and Bioinformatics. I will highlight two, which are likely to generate the most interest.

 

Exciting developments

1. Understanding the effects of lifestyle, diet and geographic location on the gut microbiota
The human microbial ecosystem plays a diversity of roles in human health and disease. In collaboration with Janet Jansson (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) and others, we aim to provide the first gut microbiome data of over 300 South African individuals from urban and rural areas. Specifically, the study aims to apply metagenomics, metaproteomics and metabolomics to assess the effect of lifestyle, diet and geographic location on the human gut microbiome.

2. African soil microbiology project
Soils are life! Of all the continents, Africa faces the largest challenges concerning soil conservation and food security, in the face of increasing populations and environmental change. However, very little is known regarding the microbial ecology of African soils. This program, which is in collaboration with 11 countries, aims to provide the first survey of African soils.

The ISME Journal - cover competition outcome

Congratulations to Steven Smriga, Vicente Fernandez and Roman Stocker for winning the cover competition!

A lot of ISME16 delegates voted for the 2017 cover image and the majority selected this great image. Thanks to the voters and we would also like to thank all other participants for sending their great artwork!

 

 

 

A diatom chain (Chaetoceros sp.) from a natural coastal community is surrounded by the natural bacterial community enriched from seawater.

Jobs
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