Vibrio
2019
Montreal
N
​
November 18 - 20, 2019
​
McGill University
Conference Center
​
Follow us on Facebook
The Conference
Conference Theme: “The Biology of Vibrios: Genomes to Biology”
​
The 8th biennial International Conference on the Biology of Vibrios (ICBV) will be held in Canada at McGill University in Montreal on November 18-20, 2019. ICBV is the only international conference that focuses on Vibrio biology, and is the only opportunity of scientists to meet and discuss recent findings and other information of interest to this field of study. This meeting routinely attracts faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, and staff from research hospitals, government agencies, and private companies. An attendance is expected from across Canada, the United States, Mexico, Europe, Latin America, Oceania (Australia/New Zealand), Africa and Asia.
The conference’s primary objective is to facilitate exchange of information and ideas through oral and poster presentations, round-table discussions, and informal sessions. This conference will encourage trainees to participate in knowledge dissemination by sponsoring a student poster competition and including a student symposium session. This event will also focus on fostering communication of recent health research to the appropriate end users by including invited participants from government and private industry, and by including a dedicated session on the challenges that Vibrio pose to the seafood industry. In this session selected members of the seafood industry will have an opportunity to communicate challenges and concerns regarding preventing Vibrio contamination in seafood to the specific researchers who are ideally suited to address these concerns. It is highly likely that this session will generate new research priorities and partnerships.
ICBV will showcase a broad range of research activities currently being conducted on the biology of Vibrios. The ICBV scientific program will focus on the theme Genomes to Biology, emphasizing the enormous research gains that have been made recently with the advent of next-generation sequencing. Specific sessions will include: 1-Ecology of Vibrios, 2-Systematics & Evolution, 3-Host-Microbe Interactions, 4-Vibrio and their Viruses, 5-Genome Biology, 6-Vibrio physiology, and 7-Type VI Secretion Systems and 8-Vibrio challenges to the Seafood Industry.
​
Local Organizing Committee
​
Lawrence Goodridge, University of Guelph
Jennifer Ronholm, McGill University
Yan Boucher, University of Alberta,
Dean Rowe-Magnus, Indiana University
Enrico Buenaventura, Health Canada
​
Secretariat
Rebecca Rutley & Januana Teixeira, Health Canada
Sessions
​
1. Ecology of Vibrios
2. Systematics & Evolution
3. Host-microbe interactions
4. Vibrio and their viruses
5. Genome Biology
6. Vibrio challenges to the Seafood Industry
7. Vibrio physiology
8. Vibrio Secretion Systems
International Science Advisory Committee
o Diane McDougald (Australia) diane.mcdougald@uts.edu.au
o Karl Klose (USA) Karl.Klose@utsa.edu
o Jyl Matson (USA) jyl.matson@utoledo.edu
o Carmen Amaro (Spain) carmen.amaro@uv.es
o Karla Satchell (USA) k-satchell@northwestern.edu
o Fabiano Thompson (Brazil) fabianothompson1@gmail.com
o Didier Mazel (France) mazel@pasteur.fr
Speakers
Keynote speakers
Daryl Domman
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Daryl Domman is an Assistant Professor within the Division of Infectious Diseases and Center for Global Health at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He is also a UNM Clinical and Translational Science Center KL2 Scholar. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Wyoming and PhD from the University of Vienna. Daryl has a keen interest in understanding diarrheal disease, which affects a tremendous number of individuals, but primarily children, worldwide. His work focuses around using large scale genomic data to address the global spread of cholera. Due to the visibility of cholera epidemics, they are using cholera as a model for understanding more large-scale patterns of diarrheal diseases.
Jesse Shapiro
​
Jesse Shapiro is an associate professor of biology at Université de Montréal, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Microbial Evolutionary Genomics. His research on vibrios and other bacteria has led to a more unified concept of speciation – the origins of new species. Recently, he has also been investigating the origins of pandemic Vibrio cholerae from environmental gene pools, and the subsequent evolution of V. cholerae within infected patients. In addition to his work on vibrio evolutionary genomics, he also develops computational methods to link bacterial genotypes with phenotypes in a variety of systems ranging from pathogens to bloom-forming cyanobacteria.
​
Kim Orth
Kim Orth is a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry and the Earl A. Forsythe Chair in Biomedical Science at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her lab studies bacteria and their crafty ways, figuring out exactly how pathogens manipulate host cells for their own benefit and survival.
Their studies of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a bacterium that causes food-borne illness, showed that the microbe injects a toxin into host cells that remodels the cell's structure, causing it to engulf the bacteria. Once inside, bacteria grow and divide until the host cell ruptures.
Studies of another Vibrio toxin by Orth and her colleagues revealed a previously unrecognized way in which cells chemically modify their proteins to alter their function. The bacteria use the modification, which Orth named AMPylation, to cause host cells to collapse and die.
Her team has also discovered a protein that many bacteria use to adhere to cells during the early stages of infection, and is testing whether they can interfere with that attachment to prevent or weaken infections in patients.
