Sampling in the Ganges Delta Region in Bangladesh

From April 29 to May 24, 2014, Yan and Tania went to Bangladesh for an extensive sampling of environmental isolates of Vibrio cholerae from water from two different coastal areas (Kuakata and Mathbaria) in the Ganges Delta region of Bangladesh. It was a great experience, and they are thankful for the support of Dr. Munirul Alam and his team from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

Tania, Yan, and Dr. Alam filtering water samples and isolating V. cholerae on site.

NML Workshops in Microbial Informatics – Winnipeg, Manitoba

Fabini attended two workshops at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The first one was the Introduction to Linux Workshop (May 5-7, 2014), and the second was the Microbial Whole Genome Sequence Analysis Workshop (May 7-16, 2014). The participants were introduced to various bioinformatics tools for whole genome sequence analysis. The workshops were organized by Dr. Gary Van Domselaar and his laboratory team.

Some light reading for the workshop

Determining the Origin of the 2010 Cholera Outbreak in Haiti

The review article "The 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti: how science solved a controversy" is now published as part of the PLOS Pathogens Pearls collection. Yan and Fabini are joined by world-renowned scientist Dr. Paul Keim (Northern Arizona University) as co-author. The use of whole-genome sequencing to determine the origin of cholera in Haiti is discussed in the paper.

The article was written specifically for PLOS Pathogens Pearls by invitation from Pearls Editor Dr. Joseph Heitman (Duke University School of Medicine).

Update 1 (April 6, 2014)
The article is featured on the Scientific American Blog Network: "The pathogen detectives: sourcing the post-earthquake cholera outbreak in Haiti" by S.E. Gould.

Update 2 (April 24, 2014)
The article is featured on Nature's Research Highlights – Social Selection, based on popular articles on social media.

How the Haiti cholera outbreak started (from Orata et al., 2014)

Department of Biological Sciences Teaching Award for Fabini

Fabini received the 2014 Department of Biological Sciences Teaching Award. He was presented with the award certificate by Dr. Heather McDermid, Associate Chair of Graduate Studies, and Dr. Tracy Ravio, Assistant Associate Chair, during the Celebration of Excellence ceremony on March 27, 2014 at the Department of Biological Sciences. Congratulations!

2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting – Honolulu, Hawaii

Yan escaped the freezing Edmonton winter to visit Hawaii and attend the 17th Ocean Sciences Meeting at the Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu, Hawaii on February 23-28, 2014. This conference served as a venue for scientific exchange across various disciplines in the marine sciences. It was the largest international assembly of ocean scientists, engineers, students, educators, and policy makers.

Yan gave an oral presentation entitled "Exploring marine reservoirs of the cholera pathogen" on February 24th.

The conference was co-sponsored by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, The Oceanography Society, and the American Geophysical Union.

Paul's BacPac Presentation

Paul will present his current work at the third installment of the Bacterial Pathogens Club (BacPac) meeting for the 2013/2014 season.

BacPac is held every first Thursday of the month from (except January) during the fall and winter terms. It is organized by Dr. Stefan Pukatzki (Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology).

Mothur Workshop – Romulus, Michigan

Tania attended the Computational Microbial Ecology Workshop in Romulus, Michigan on August 26-28, 2013. The workshop aimed to familiarize participants with mothur, an open-source software for the bioinformatics needs of the microbial ecology community. The workshop was a mix of lectures, discussions, and hands-on use of mothur with real sequence data. The workshop was organized by Dr. Pat Schloss and his team from the University of Michigan, who are also the developers of the mothur software.

1st International Summer School on Evolution – Lisbon, Portugal

Paul recently attended the First International Summer School on Evolution at the Ciência Viva Knowledge Pavilion, Lisbon, Portugal on July 15-19, 2013. During the week-long event, international experts in the field held courses on the critical aspects of biological and socio-cultural evolution, which centered around the following themes: evolutionary theory, sociocultural evolution, and philosophy of biology.

This workshop was organized by the the Applied Evolutionary Epistemology Lab of the Centre for Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon, in collaboration with Ciência Viva and with the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

Paul (far left) and all participants