It is with great excitement that we are launching a new podcast: Microbes and Us, where we will host insightful conversations with inspiring people from the international microbiology community.

Our FEMS communication gurus, Joseph Shuttleworth and Eleni Koursari, will bring you a monthly episode featuring guests from every corner of the microbial world. Whether you are a scientist, a lover of microbes, or you just want to join in with our fun microbiology community, then this is the podcast for you!

Our first two episodes feature in-depth interviews with two of the FEMS Ambassadors:

In episode 1, Joseph Shuttleworth talks to Prof. Linda J Kenney, FEMS Ambassador to the USA, about research, career progression, networking, the public perception of science, and the importance of internationalism for scientific knowledge.

In episode 2, our guest interviewer Corrado Nai talks to Prof. Ken-ichi Yoshida, FEMS Ambassador to Japan, as they discuss how science crosses international boarders, from Japan to the EU to America. 

We hope you enjoy these episodes and stay tuned for many more! You can find Microbes and Us on a huge range of podcast platforms: Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Castbox, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic

The Perspectives blog written from our International Women’s Day live discussion is now out for our to read! Our 6 amazing speakers took the time to write up their views to remind us once again how important it is to #ChooseToChallenge!

Thank you to our speakers and authors: Hilary Lappin-Scott, Branka Vasiljevic, Ally Hughes, Diana Githwe, Sylvia Soldatou and Eglė Lastauskienė.

A new perspective article in FEMS Microbes looks at how social media has become a lot more important since the pandemic started.

The authors provide tips on how to better market research outputs from a trainee viewpoint. We talked with Kait Al and Jeremy Burton in a #BehindThePaper interview for the #FEMSmicroBlog about how scientists can harness social media for science communication purposes; and why they chose the Transparent Peer Review option.

Illustration for the #FEMSmicroBlog by Eliza Wolfson (@eliza_coli), CC-BY-NC-SA-4.

Get ready for the IMD Blogging Bootcamp

If you're interested in science communication and would like to try your hand at blogging, International Microorganism Day is hosting a blogging bootcamp.

This online course is self paced with pre-recorded classes mixed with homework, feedback and live "office hours". The final project in the course is to produce a blog post for the IMD website in the style of your favourite author.

This course is perfect for beginner and intermediate writers and is broken down into bitesize sections that can be spread out over time or done back to back for an intensive learning style.

Accreditation is provided upon completion of the bootcamp, please reply to this email if you are interested in registering.

We seek an experienced Editor to join our Editorial Board to lead a new Section within the journal that will publish articles from clinical microbiology and clinical veterinary microbiology, to start in early summer 2021. The candidate should have strong research experience in one of these two fields and will usually have experience of handling articles for an international journal for at least a year. The candidate will usually hold a permanent position in an academic, clinical or industry role that directly relates to clinical or clinical veterinary microbiology.

Responsibilities include the initial examination of newly submitted manuscripts for suitability and for e.g. suspected plagiarism, their issuing to Handling Editors, keeping on top of where manuscripts are in the pipeline for the Section so as to avoid delays, handing over to the Editor-in-Chief cases such as plagiarism, data fabrication or ethical issues.

Within the first 12 months, the Editing of a Thematic Issue will be anticipated. These are typically edited by Guest Editors though an in-house presence is often required in addition to ensure the quality of submissions does not drop. 

We are a journal and Federation committed to equality, diversity, dignity and inclusivity and therefore very much welcome applicants of any age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality etc.

Whilst FEMS is a nominally European organisation, we recruit Editors from all areas of the world and particularly are interested in applicants from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Central American and South America, as they are currently under-represented in our Editorial Board.

Remuneration is €1,000 per annum. We are also able to pay for Section Editors to attend conferences to represent the journal when appropriate.

Interested parties should send their application to the Editor-in-Chief (Dr Rich Boden, rich.boden@plymouth.ac.uk) not later than 2359h BST, Sunday 23rd May 2021. This should include a recent CV that outlines their experience and a 500 word statement of their vision for the Clinical Microbiology and Clinical Veterinary Microbiology Section and their proposed first Thematic Issue title and a brief statement of its scope.

Informal queries can be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief but will not be used as part of the decision-making process.

FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Your natural research habitat

FEMS Microbiology Letters

Promoting new ideas

FEMS Microbiology Reviews

Outstanding reviews from leading experts

Sea foams are ephemeral hotspots for distinctive bacterial communities contrasting sea-surface microlayer and underlying surface water

The occurrence of foams at oceans’ surfaces is patchy and generally short-lived, but a detailed understanding of bacterial communities inhabiting sea foams is lacking. Here, the authors investigated how marine foams differ from the sea-surface microlayer (SML), a <1-mm-thick layer at the air–sea interface, and underlying water from 1 m depth. Samples of sea foams, SML and underlying water collected from the North Sea and Timor Sea indicated that foams were often characterized by a high abundance of small eukaryotic phototrophic and prokaryotic cells as well as a high concentration of surface-active substances (SAS).

Janina Rahlff, Christian Stolle, Helge-Ansgar Giebel, Nur Ili Hamizah Mustaffa, Oliver Wurl, Daniel P. R. Herlemann

Probiotic capability of novel lactic acid bacteria isolated from worker honey bees gut microbiota

The study aimed to evaluate the probiotic and safety properties of lactic acid bacterial (LAB) strains isolated from the gut microbiota of honey bee Apis mellifera L., since this source remains a promising reservoir of microbial diversity. A total of five bacterial isolates were molecularly identified using 16S rRNA gene sequencing as Enterococcus faecalis-HBE1, Lactobacillus brevis-HBE2, Enterococcus faecalis-HBE3, Enterococcus faecalis-HBE4 and Lactobacillus casei-HBE5. These results put forward that lactic acid bacterial strain isolated from honey bee workers can be considered as promising candidates for future applications as starter cultures and could constitute new potential probiotics for the production of functional dietary products promoting health benefits.

Hoda Mahmoud Elzeini, Abdel Rahman Abdel Atti Ali, Nasr Fawzy Nasr, Mariam Hassan, Ashwaa Abdel moneim Hassan, Yasser Essam Elenany

Bacteriophages as drivers of bacterial virulence and their potential for biotechnological exploitation

Bacteria-infecting viruses (phages) and their hosts maintain an ancient and complex relationship. Bacterial predation by lytic phages drives an ongoing phage-host arms race, whereas temperate phages initiate mutualistic relationships with their hosts upon lysogenization as prophages.This review builds the argument that virulence-influencing prophages hold extensive, unexplored potential for biotechnology. More specifically, it highlights the development potential of novel therapies against infectious diseases, to address the current antibiotic resistance crisis.

Kaat Schroven, Abram Aertsen, Rob Lavigne

Pathogens and Disease

Next generation host pathogen research

FEMS Yeast Research

The yeast community journal 

Out Now: Thematic Issue from FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Rickettsia-host interaction: strategies of intracytosolic host colonization

Bacterial infection is a highly complex biological process involving a dynamic interaction between the invading microorganism and the host. Specifically, intracellular pathogens seize control over the host cellular processes including membrane dynamics, actin cytoskeleton, phosphoinositide metabolism, intracellular trafficking and immune defense mechanisms to promote their host colonization. To accomplish such challenging tasks, virulent bacteria deploy unique species-specific secreted effectors to evade and/or subvert cellular defense surveillance mechanisms to establish a replication niche. This review will discuss our current understandings on how different Rickettsia species deploy their effector arsenal to manipulate host cellular processes to promote their intracytosolic life within the mammalian host.

Oliver H Voss, M Sayeedur Rahman

In silico identification of key regulators instigating the pre-meiotic phase during respiration in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Like higher eukaryotes, diploid MATa/MATα budding yeasts can undergo both mitosis and meiosis. Although the potential reason for their phase switching is elucidated by two consecutive processes, i.e. transition from fermentation (mitotic growth) to respiration in glucose-deficient media and then complete shift to meiotic phase in combined nitrogen- and glucose-starved media, the genomic interactions and regulatory cascade operating this drive remain elusive. Here, we aim to explore the regulatory cross-talk that mediates the phase transition

Deepyaman Das, Hironmoy Sarkar, Soumita Podder

Thematic Issue on Microbe vs Metals

Metals play a key role in our daily lives and affect everything from healthcare to industrialisation and our culture. Covering topics including metal resistance, biomineralization, sulfate remediation, synthetic biology, bacterial bioremediation, biorecycling, microbial adaptation, and fungal diversity, the articles in this collection demonstrate the unique and complex relationship between microbes and metals.

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

Taking place 7-8th June 2021, the Nidovirus symposium is a traditionally triennial gathering of researchers and scientists active in the field of the Nidoviruses, a broad group of pathogens of humans and animals such as the zoonotic SARS- and MERS-coronaviruses, common cold viruses, and many economically highly relevant livestock viruses.

This online meeting hence provides a unique international forum for sharing scientific results and exchanging ideas as well as for meeting old friends.

Interdisciplinary approach allows investigation of hitherto unknown microorganisms

Dr Jörn Petersen and Dr. Boyke Bunk at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ–German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, used an interdisciplinary approach to investigate with their teams three different cyanobacteria and their associated microorganisms.

Simultaneously, they were able to determine the position of these important cyanobacteria within the tree of life. The researchers recently published their findings in a special issue of the journal Genes with a special focus on metagenomics. 

In the run up to the Microbiology journal anniversary in 2022, we will be launching a series of themed collections, celebrating the breadth of microbiology and showcasing why microbiology matters.

We are pleased to announce that we have launched our first themed collection in this series, Metals in Microbiology

With metals being the catalyst for almost half of all microbial reactions, this collection of keynote research will highlight how these metal-microbe interact, how to utilise metals in proteins and more.

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