Genomics: The Power and the Promise Conference – Ottawa, Ontario

The Genomics: The Power and the Promise Conference was held at the Ottawa Convention Centre on November 24-26, 2014, hosted by Genome Canada and the Gairdner Foundation. This conference celebrated the achievements in genomics research in Canada and allowed participants to meet some of the best genomics researchers in the world.

Fabini was one of 30 participants, out of nearly 150 abstract submissions, invited to present a poster at the conference. The poster session covered studies from various fields – agriculture, energy, environment, fisheries, forestry, health, and mining. Included in his acceptance was a travel award that covered his expenses during his stay in Ottawa.

A copy of the presented poster, "Comparative genomics of Vibrio metoecus with its close relative Vibrio cholerae reveals its pathogenic potential," can be found here and the published abstract here.

Fabini presenting his poster at the Genomics conference

New Vibrio Species Closely Related to Vibrio cholerae

After a long and frustrating debate on what to name the new bacterium, the official species description for Vibrio metoecus is finally published! The paper is entitled "Vibrio metoecus sp. nov., a close relative of Vibrio cholerae isolated from coastal brackish ponds and clinical specimens" and published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology today. Yan and Paul lead the research group, which included prominent environmental microbiologist Dr. Rita Colwell (University of Maryland). As the title of the paper mentions, the newly described species, V. metoecus, is now the known closest relative of the well-known V. cholerae.

V. metoecus was formerly and unofficially named V. metecus. The Boucher Lab is currently pursuing more research work to gain insight on the evolution and emergence of this new species.

Electron micrographs of V. metoecus. (A) Scanning electron microscopy, scale bar = 2 μm; (B) Transmission electron microscopy, scale bar = 0.2 μm (from Kirchberger et al., 2014)

Publication Awards for the Boucher Lab

Yan, Fabini, and co-authors, lead by Dr. Lee Katz and Dr. Cheryl Tarr of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), received two prestigious CDC awards in recognition of their paper entitled "Evolutionary dynamics of Vibrio cholerae O1 following a single-source introduction to Haiti," published in the journal mBio on July 2, 2013.

For their work, the group received the James H. Nakano Citation Award from the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID) for one of the best papers of 2013 and a Charles C. Shepard Award nomination (Laboratory Science category) from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The awards were accepted by members of the CDC group during the ceremony (pictured below).

Accepting the James H. Nakano Citation Award at the CDC (from left): Nakano's son, Lori Gladney, Lee Katz, Cheryl Tarr, Beth Bell (director of NCEZID), Maryann Turnsek, and Molly Freeman (photo by Lee Katz)

2014 CIFAR-IMB General Meeting – Liblice, Czech Republic

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research – Integrated Microbial Biodiversity (CIFAR-IMB) Program held its annual conference for members (and their students) at the beautiful Liblice Castle, Czech Republic on June 25-29, 2015. This time, it was Fabini's turn to attend, and he presented a poster of his work entitled "Vibrio metoecus, a novel emerging pathogen closely related to Vibrio cholerae." The group also went on an afternoon trip to Prague on June 27th to attend a private one-hour organ and violin concert at the St. Salvator Church by Charles Bridge.

This was Fabini's first trip to Europe, and he visited various cities after the conference (Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Bremen, and Amsterdam).

Fabini presenting his poster at the CIFAR conference

2014 Banff Conference on Infectious Diseases – Banff, Alberta

Paul and Fabini attended the 2014 Banff Conference on Infectious Diseases (BCID) on June 4-8, 2014 at the Banff Centre in the beautiful Canadian rockies. BCID, organized this year by Dr. Stefan Pukatzki and his lab (Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology), was a venue for scientific discussions with researchers on pathogenesis and other aspects of infectious diseases and host defenses.

The lab presented posters entitled "Looking for the ancestor of cholera in its natural habitat" (Paul) and "Vibrio metoecus, a novel emerging pathogen closely related to Vibrio cholerae" (Fabini).

Amazing view of the Canadian Rockies from the Banff Centre

Tania is the Recipient of the NSERC PGS-D Award

It was announced today that Tania is one of the recipients of the Postgraduate Scholarship  –  Doctoral (PGS-D) award by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Congratulations Tania!

Update (September 25, 2014)
As NSERC PGS-D awardee, Tania also receives the President's Doctoral Prize of Distinction, a top-up award for recipients of one of the Doctoral Tri-Council Scholarships (NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR). Again, congratulations Tania!

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)