Saarbrücken, October 23, 2023 – This year’s symposium of the VAAM Expert Group “Biology of Bacterial Natural Producers” took place in Saarbrücken from 20 – 22 September. It was organised by HIPS group leaders Christine Beemelmanns, Julian Hegemann, Alexey Gurevich and Kenan Bozhüyük. With over 170 participants, this expert group meeting was very well attended.
The “Vereinigung für Allgemeine und Angewandte Mikrobiologie” (VAAM) annually hosts a symposium at changing locations in Germany. Additionally expert groups hold section meetings with a focus on special topics. The topics of this year’s symposium for natural product producers span from microbial physiology, ecology, genomics and metabolomics to natural product discovery and natural product-based drug discovery. All participants have special interest in the role, function and origin of natural products that are produced by microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and microalgae. The program included five keynote lectures by invited speakers, two topic speakers, 25 selected presentations by PhD students, postdocs and junior group leaders. Furthermore, 76 scientific posters were presented during the three-day symposium, of which four won a prize for best poster. Additionally, two presenters were awarded a prize for best presentation. Besides these outstanding achievements on site, the "Hendrik Wolff Prize for Mass Spectrometric Methods in Microbiology" was awarded to Nadya Abbood. The prize is presented annually at the VAAM section meeting in memory of the scientist Dr Henrik Wolff.
