Minutes of the Division B/D meeting at the ASM General Meeting, 1998

1. Divisions B and D Pseudo-merger

   During the past several years the distinction between the areas covered by these two divisions has blurred. For the past two years we have gradually increased our interaction and co-ordination for planning the invited seminar sessions and poster sessions at the General Meeting. This was especially true for the 1998 meeting where all seminar and poster sessions were developed and scheduled together. We plan to continue to do this in the future. The advantage to doing this rather than simply merging and creating a new single division is the following. By remaining separate but working together we double the number of "officers" and therefore double our voice at council and at the meeting planning sessions. It probably also allows us to plan an extra session or two for the general meeting. We may reconsider this plan about merging in the future but for now things seem to be working very well this way.

   Related to these changes we have made some changes in the topics listed for abstract submission. Many of these topics were outdated and there was considerable overlap between the topics listed for Division B and Division D. Thus, we have combined these topics (now listed in the abstract submission book as BD-1, BD-2...... BD-25) and updated some of the topics. When submitting abstracts please be sure to specify one of these topics rather than simply listing B or D as this makes putting together the poster session much simpler.

2. How is the General Meeting Planned?

   Preliminary plans for the next General Meeting occur during the weekend before the current General Meeting (i.e. it starts a year in advance). At this time the division chairs and chairs-elect are told what the colloquia topics will be (these are planned by a separate committee), and they are told how many sessions they will be able to plan. The number of sessions allotted to Divisions B and D have typically been 2-3 each, but next year we will have 8 sessions to plan together. Because the number of sessions is limited, for the past few years we have felt that planning broad based sessions that will be of interest to a large part of our membership rather than very specific, focused sessions makes the most sense. We greatly appreciate suggestions for these sessions and hope that more people will become involved in making suggestions. However, these ideas need to be communicated to the chair or chair-elect before the General Meeting. Nevertheless, we still need your input for next year's meeting. While the general session topics have been chosen they are still in the planning stage and can be modified. Please let us know your suggestions for speakers that have something exciting to communicate that could fit within these session topics or suggestions for people who would be interested in planning the details of the sessions.

3. Colloquia topics for 1999

   Next year's General Meeting will be very special as it will be the centennial. The colloquia topics are designed to highlight where various sub-disciplines have come from, where they are today, and where they are headed tomorrow. There are six colloquia each with 3-4 seminar sessions. If you have any suggestions for speakers for these sessions please let us know and we will pass these along. However, we will need your suggestions soon as speakers will be chosen by the end of June for these sessions.

   0. Pathogenesis
      1. Bacterial Pathogenesis
      2. Evolution of Diagnostic Microbiology
      3. Immune Evasion
   1. Microbes and Public Health
      0. Drug Resistance
      1. Vaccines
      2. Pandemics
      3. Water, Blood, and Food safety
   2. Microbial Diversity
      0. Origins of Diversity
         genetic exchange, recombination, mutagenesis
      1. Microbes in Unexpected Habitats
         extremophiles, fungi, viruses, environmental
      2. Products of Diversity
   3. Biotechnology
      0. Genes
         gene therapy, antisense, use of genome sequences to identify potential drug targets
      1. Proteins
         protein engineering, chiral chemistry and enzymes, bioconversion
      2. Biochemical Genetic Engineering
         combinatorial biosynthesis, metabolic engineering
   4. Molecular dissection of complex biological processes
      0. Signal transduction
         cross talk (metabolites and genome interactions), response to extracellular stimulation
      1. Cell-cell interactions
         quorum sensing, conjugation, biofilms, cell-cell interactions, yeast mating
      2. Structure and assembly of complex molecular machines
      3. Genomic Biology
   5. Host Defenses
      0. Immunological recognition and memory
      1. Effector mechanisms of immunity
      2. Innate immunity
         complement, cytokines, antimicrobial peptides, antimicrobial lectins and surfactants

4. B/D Invited session topics for 1999

   As mentioned above we will be able to sponsor eight seminar sessions for next year's meeting. The broad topic ideas are listed below. They will probably evolve somewhat over the next couple of months based on your input. Please send your suggestions for speakers and/or convenors to either the chairs (Susan Straley, Susan West, Joe Carlin, Virginia Miller) or the chairs-elect (David Briles, Jim Summersgill) as soon as possible. These sessions need to be fully mapped out by the middle of August 1998. The eight session topics are listed below - each will have 4-5 speakers.

   0. Virulence gene regulation
   1. Phage and their contribution to microbial diversity
   2. Role of intracellular phase and dissemination of extracellular pathogens
   3. Role of apoptosis in bacterial pathogenesis
   4. Molecular basis of virulence of veterinary pathogens
   5. Immune evasion strategies of Gram positive pathogens
   6. Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
   7. Respiratory pathogens - viral predisposition, Burkholderia, non-typeable Haemophilus, pneumococcus, Legionella

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Created: December 5, 1996
Revised: August 23, 2000
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