Microbiology Monthly Newsletter for Microbiology at the Department of Cell & Molecular Biology Lundberg Laboratory, Göteborg University [ January 1999 ] [ February 1999 ] [ March 1999 ] [ April 1999 ] [ May 1999 ] [ June 1999 ] [ July-August 1999 ] [ September 1999 ] [ October 1999 ] February 1999 Home page Niklas, Stefan and myself have worked on renewing our homepage - you can now check it out on the net at location: http://pc61.gmm.gu.se/gmm/. Please do so and scrutinize your own research project page. If you feel that it needs some updating, communicate this to Niklas and give him an amended version at your earliest convenience. Also, feel free to comment on anything or everything on the homepage to help us improve it. Scientific Contributions We have two new contributions on our "science display" outside Pia’s office. Anne and Kristian report on the isolation of a hitherto unknown gene of E. coli encoding a universal stress protein (UspB). The protein, which has some weak similarity to certain domains of the yeast protein Dynein and bacterial ferrochelatase, appears to be an integral membrane protein which render starving cells of E. coli resistant to ethanol. The promoter of the gene was mapped and demonstrated to require the starvation-specific sigma factor sigma38. Promoters transcribed by this sigma factor are interesting because they appear to lack a consensus sequence at the -35 region. Instead, the defining property of this region of sigma38-dependent promoters may be an intrinsic DNA curvature. This issue is still controversial, however, Roslyn Bill is co-author of a new book entitled Protein Glycosylation. In this publication, you will find everything you want to know but was afraid to ask about how and why sugars and proteins get together. Check them out! New Positions As most of you probably know already, Lena Gustafsson has been awarded a Professorship in Biotechnology at Chalmers and will be starting this position as from April 2, 1999. In addition, Stefan Hohmann, has been awarded a position as ”särskild forskare” with NFR in the subject matter of ”Metabolic analysis of microorganisms relevant for biofuel production”. Congratulations both of you! Scientific Meetings ASM is organizing a number of interesting meetings this year. For example, there will be a meeting called ”Microbial Biodiversity” in Chicago, August 5-9 that I think could interest some scholars and students of the department. This meeting will included topics such as ”The evolution of diversity, Stress responses, Microbial symbiosis and communication, Biogeochemical cycles, Links between metabolic diversity and phylogenetic diversity, and Microbial ecology of disease” More info at: www.asmusa.org/mtgsrc/mtgs.htm. Another interesting meeting, in Verona April 19-21, is called ”Controlling the proliferation of the microbial cell factory”, which will focus on interdisciplinary topics at the forefront of the utilization of microbes in Biotechnology. The meeting concentrates on the molecular genetics of microbial cell cycles. More info at: http://www.cnb.uam.es/~mvicente/Microbial_Cell_Factory.html Also, do not forget to register to the Annual Meeting of Swedish Microbiology in Lund (April 14-15) if you intend to participate. Have a great month! Thomas