Sunday 18th September: Arrivals
Evening: Welcome Reception, Clare College
Monday 19th September
Keynote address – Kenn Gerdes (University of Copenhagen, Denmark): From plasmid maintenance to bacterial multi-drug tolerance.
Craig McLean (University of Oxford, UK): Natural selection, gene expression and the emergence of plasmid stability in bacterial populations.
Alessandra Carattoli (Instituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome, Italy): The impact of plasmid classification on the epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance.
Coffee
Neville Firth (University of Sydney, Australia): Replication of pSK41-like conjugative plasmids.
Igor Konieczny (University of Gdansk, Poland): Rep monomers and dimers, chaperones and proteases in control of iteron-containing plasmid replication.
Rafael Giraldo (Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas CSIC, Madrid, Spain): Oligomeric Amyloid Assemblies of an Origin-Bound RepA Initiator Inhibit Plasmid DNA Replication.
Bruno Gonzalez-Zorn (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain): ColE1 plasmids reloaded: Novel aspects of host adaptation and coexistence.
Steven Hancock (University of Queensland, Australia): Identification of IncA/C Replication and Maintenance Genes and Development of a Plasmid Multi-Locus Typing Scheme.
Lunch
Jacques Oberto (Université Paris-Sud, France): Plasmid-driven evolution of Archaea Thermococcales genomes.
Franck Pasta (Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France): Coordination and self-control for maintaining the four replicons of Burkholderia cenocepacia.
Francois Cornet (Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France): Domestication of Xer recombination is an early step in chromosome genesis from plasmids ancestors.
Didier Mazel (Institut Pasteur, Paris): Replication of the plasmid-related chromosome 2 is subservient to the replication of chromosome 1 by a novel mechanism in Vibrio cholerae.
Tea + Posters 1
Sally Partridge (University of Sydney, Australia): Annotation and analysis of plasmid sequences.
Alan Grossman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA): Plasmid-like properties of integrative and conjugative elements.
Darek Bartosik (University of Warsaw, Poland): Essential extrachromosomal replicons of Paracoccus spp. (Alphaproteobacteria).
Ethan Wyrsch (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia): WGS analysis of Australian porcine E. coli.
Tuesday 20th September
Michael Brockhurst (University of York, UK): Solving the plasmid paradox.
Eva Top (University of Idaho, USA): The effect of biofilm growth on the evolution of plasmid persistence and permissiveness.
Jan Kreft (University of Birmingham, UK): Evolution of broad v narrow host range plasmids.
Martin Werisch (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany): Adaptation and its relevance for plasmid maintenance.
Tatiana Dimitriu (University of Exeter, UK): Selection of plasmid transfer through indirect public goods benefits.
Coffee
Daniela Barilla (University of York, UK): Borrowing building blocks from bacteria and eukarya: a three-component DNA segregation machine in archaea.
Jean-Yves Bouet (Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France): Mechanism of plasmid F segregation: what we learn from super-resolution microscopy?
Juan Alonso (National Centre for Biotechnology, CSIC, Madrid, Spain): Molecular anatomy of the ParA-ParB partition complex within the nucleoid.
Lunch
Punting on the Cam; the Fitzwilliam Art Gallery/Museum; the Botanical Gardens
Tea + Posters 2
Barbara Funnell (University of Toronto, Canada): Timing is key: kinetics of ParB-ParA-DNA interactions during plasmid partition.
Yong Wang (University of Arkansas, USA): To Cluster or Not to Cluster: New Insight into the Segregation Mechanism of High-Copy Bacterial Plasmids using Quantitative Localization Microscopy.
Alexander Harms (University of Copenhagen, Denmark): Interbacterial effector proteins as an evolutionary missing link between toxin-antitoxin modules, conjugative DNA transfer, and host-targeting type IV secretion.
Wednesday 21st September
Fernando de la Cruz Calahorra (University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain): Extent and control of plasmid conjugation: dynamics, interactions and barriers.
Gabriel Waksman (Birkbeck and University College London, UK): Structural and molecular biology of bacterial secretion systems
Elizabeth Grohmann (Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany): Key players of an Enterococcus Type IV Secretion System.
Jacques Mahillon (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium): Deciphering pXO16 complex biology.
Lina Thoma (University of Tubingen, Germany): Intramycelial plasmid spreading during conjugative DNA transfer in Streptomyces.
Coffee
Julian Rood (Monash University, Australia): Structural and functional analysis of the conjugation system from Clostridium perfringens.
Guenther Koraimann (University of Graz, Austria): A non-canonical RNAP drives F-like tra-operon expression.
Walter Keller (University of Graz, Austria): TraN, a regulator of conjugative DNA-transfer
Christophe Merlin (University of Lorraine, France): Exploring the effect of antibiotics at sub-inhibitory concentrations on the activity of promoters involved in the mobility of mobile genetic elements.
Lunch
Susanna Brom (Centre for Genome Science, Cuernavaca, Mexico): Does the nodulation process provide an adequate environment for rhizobial conjugation?
Matxalen Llosa (Universidad de Cantabria, Spain): The conjugative relaxase TrwC delivers DNA into human cells and promotes its integration in the human genome.
Robert Moran (University of Sydney, Australia): A cryptic, RC plasmid from a commensal Escherichia coli has oriT sites and is mobilised by a B/O plasmid.
Hideaki Nojiri (University of Tokyo, Japan): Plasmid-borne nucleoid associated proteins, key factors determining host cell physiology and fitness.
Tea + Posters 3
Konny Smalla (Julius Kühn-Institut Federal Research Centre, Braunschweig, Germany): Plant species dependent enrichment of IncP-1 in the rhizosphere.
Ben Raymond (Imperial College, London, UK): Why here? Why there? Ecological and genetic determinants of plasmid distribution in Escherichia coli and Bacillus cereus s.l.
Thibault Stalder (University of Idaho, USA): Spread of mobile genetic elements in agricultural soil as affected by fertilization practices.
ISPB Biannual General Meeting
Thursday 22nd September
Liz Wellington (University of Warwick, UK): Plasmids and antibiotic resistance: how both persist in the environment.
Bart Smets (Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark): Measuring community-wide conjugal plasmid permissiveness.
Hannah Jordt (University of Idaho, USA) Use it AND lose it: Alternating selection promotes horizontal gene transfer
Yohann Lacotte (University of Limoges, France): Fitness cost of class 1 integrons in E. coli.
Ellie Harrison (University of York, UK): Plasmid carriage can limit antagonistic bacteria – phage coevolution.
Coffee
George Chaconas (University of Calgary, Canada): Plasmid-encoded antigenic variation system of the Lyme disease spirochete.
Alvaro San Milan (Ramón y Cajal University Hospital, Madrid, Spain): Multicopy plasmids potentiate the evolution of antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria.
Anna Shepherd (University of Oxford, UK): Tn4401 mobility leads to dynamic plasmid structures in a hospital outbreak.
Lunch
Mark Toleman (University of Cardiff, UK): Integrative Conjugative Elements and antibiotic resistance. (Title to be confirmed, TBC)
Steve Djordjevic (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia): Whole Genome Sequence analysis of multiple antibiotic resistant Escherichia coli from humans and food animals.
Piklu Roy Chowdhury (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia): Inducing IS26 mediated gene-shuffling in complex multi-drug resistance loci.
Makoto Kuroda (National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Japan): GenEpid-J: an integrated database of pathogen genomics and epidemiology focused on plasmids involving in the antimicrobial resistance.
Tea + Posters 4
Jon Iredell (University of Sydney, Australia): In vivo plasmid husbandry – a bedside perspective.
Chris Thomas (University of Birmingham, UK): IncP plasmids as vectors for plasmid curing.
Keynote address – Dhruba Chattoraj (NIH, Bethesda, USA): Random vs. cell cycle-regulated replication initiation in bacteria: Insights from studying a plasmid-like replicon in Vibrio cholerae.
Evening: Conference Dinner, Gonville and Caius College.
Friday 23rd September: Departures