Report of GCOE Microbial Workshop
Fourteen Ph.D. students from the Laboratory of Microbiology at Wageningen University (WUR), the Netherlands, visited NAIST on April 27, 2011 as part of their study trip to China and Japan. We took this opportunity to hold a microbial workshop between WUR and NAIST in the Graduate School of Biological Sciences.
After brief introductions of NAIST and WUR by Prof. Hiroshi Takagi and Asst. Prof. Servé Kengen, respectively, five students from each university gave English oral presentations. The presentations from WUR included interesting topics in microbial physiology and systems biology of lactic acid bacteria, and novel archaeal virus-host interactions. From NAIST, students from the Takagi, Mori, Ogasawara and Maki labs described recent progress in their research on Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. A poster session after lunch featured 27 presentations, and generated lively discussions between WUR and NAIST students.
The workshop was run by the students of both universities and covered a wide variety of microorganisms from archaea to yeast, so that the participants had a great impression that the exchange of information at the workshop was mutually beneficial. We hope that such an active microbial workshop or symposium will be organized again at NAIST.
