Be part of the first annual digital VAAM conference from 18-19 March 2021, which will be held with the motto “Best of VAAM”!

The conference will start with a highlight session, with a keynote lecture by Antje Boetius followed by the presentation of the VAAM awards. The symposia of the VAAM specialist groups form the core of the digital conference. The conference will conclude with a general meeting on the afternoon of 19 March. Participation is free of charge for VAAM members.

The 17 sessions the special interest groups of the VAAM organized, cover all relevant areas of microbiology and include a session for early career scientists.

Registration is now open, conference language is English.

Are you active in science communications and public relations, or know someone who is? Then you can now nominate someone for the FEMS Science Communication Award.

Starting 2021, we will biennially award a campaign that contributes significantly to the public discourse about science and evidence. 

Nomination deadline: 1 May 2021

Make sure our next FEMS Microbiology Ecology webinar is in your calendar:

FEMS Microbiology Ecology Webinar on Microbial Ecotoxicology

Thursday 4 March 2021, 10am EST / 3pm GMT/ 4pm CET / 11pm CST

The term "microbial ecotoxicology" was coined to describe interdisciplinary investigations of the response of the microbial compartment in ecosystems subject to environmental contamination. The webinar speakers will present key recent investigations in this emerging area of microbial ecology research.

We would like to thank our growing community of reviewers for all of our seven FEMS Journals! As of 2020, we had in our community, 1906 reviewers who worked to evaluate FEMS Journal manuscripts throughout the year and helped to maintain the high-quality of our published articles.

Our gratitude also extends to the contribution of Early Career Scientists who acted as reviewers for our two new Open Access journals FEMS Microbes and microLife.

 Thank you all!

FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Your natural research habitat

FEMS Microbiology Letters

Promoting new ideas

FEMS Microbiology Reviews

Outstanding reviews from leading experts

Chloroflexi are widespread in subsurface environments, and recent studies indicate that they represent a major fraction of the communities in subseafloor sediment. Here, the authors compare the abundance, diversity, metabolic potential and gene expression of Chloroflexi from three abyssal sediment cores from the western North Atlantic Gyre (water depth >5400 m) covering up to 15 million years of sediment deposition, where Chloroflexi were found to represent major components of the community at all sites.

Aurèle Vuillemin, Zak Kerrigan, Steven D'Hondt, and William D Orsi

Polar glacier forefields offer an unprecedented framework for studying community assembly processes in regions that are geographically and climatically isolated. Through amplicon sequence variant (ASV) inference, the authors compared the composition and structure of soil bacterial communities from glacier forefields in Iceland and Antarctica to assess overlap between communities and the impact of established cryptogamic covers on the uniqueness of their taxa.

Álvaro del Moral, Isaac Garrido-Benavent, Jorge Durán, Jan R Lehmann, Alexandra Rodríguez, Starri Heiðmarsson, and Asunción de los Ríos

Bacterial cell proliferation is highly efficient, and this efficiency is underpinned by the robustness of the cell cycle and its synchronization with cell growth and cytokinesis. Recent advances in bacterial cell biology brought about by single-cell physiology in microfluidic chambers suggest a series of simple phenomenological models at the cellular scale, coupling cell size and growth with the cell cycle. Here, the authors contrast the apparent simplicity of these mechanisms based on the addition of a constant size between cell cycle events with the complexity of the underlying regulatory networks.

Alix Meunier, François Cornet, and Manuel Campos

Pathogens and Disease

Next generation host pathogen research

FEMS Yeast Research

The yeast community journal 

Out Now: Thematic Issue

Plasmodium falciparum infection-mediated Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) reactivation is well established in malaria-endemic countries. We hypothesize that, during malaria onset, the reactivated EBV can infect human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBECs). This may cause severe cerebral manifestations. We infected HBECs with EBV in vitro.

Omkar Indari, Rajesh Chandramohanadas, and Hem Chandra Jha

Co-consumption of D-xylose and D-glucose by Saccharomyces cerevisiae is essential for cost-efficient cellulosic bioethanol production. There is a need for improved sugar conversion rates to minimize fermentation times. Here, the authors used the an evolved lineage of xylose fermenting S. cerevisiae strains (Nijland et al. 2019a) that were optimized for high performance D-xylose metabolism in the presence of high concentrations of D-glucose, and reintroduced the hexokinase Hxk2 to restore D-glucose metabolism. The data suggest that D-glucose/D-xylose co-consumption in high-performance D-xylose consuming strains causes the glycolytic flux to saturate.

Jeroen G Nijland, Hyun Yong Shin, Eleonora Dore, Donny Rudinatha, Paul P de Waal, and Arnold J M Driessen

We are proud to announce the publication of the latest Thematic Issue of papers from FEMS Microbiology Letters on Metabolite Transport. This Thematic Issue showcases papers which demonstrate the biotechnological applications of transport systems.

Covering topics including the bioproduction of organic acids, Aspergillus niger citrate accumulation, glucose transporters, and metabolic engineering, the papers in this collection highlight the important research that is being conducted in this field.

Research and Training Grants are meant to assist early career scientists in pursuing research and training at a European host institution in another country than their own country of residence.

Deadline for application: 1 July for projects that will start within a year from the following 1 September

Join the Microbiology Society’s Annual Conference, which is going digital this year! 

26th – 30th April 2021

Now, more than ever, connecting with your peers worldwide, showcasing and discussing the latest research is essential in helping to advance the understanding and impact of microbiology.

From symposiums covering Microbial Biotechnology and AMR, through to SARS-CoV2 and the COVID-19 pandemic workshops, this is an event not to be missed.

Bringing together industry, research and policy.
The quickening pace of scientific and technological
discovery is re-shaping policies, markets and
economies around the world.

Arm yourself with a
regular new Science|Business briefing.

Marking the 60th anniversary of the Slovenian Microbiological Society was the publication of the book “Small, Smaller, the Smallest”.

Written by famous Slovenian microbiologists, this book features nine essays that describe the writer’s involvement with their field of microbiology and personal views on microorganisms.

Oxford University Press have reached new Read and Publish agreements with Jisc and FinElib.

This provides Finnish and UK scholars with fair and sustainable access to publications and open access publishing options, including for the FEMS journals!

Find out if your institution is participating here: