ISHAM NEWS! (29-04-2011)

Dear , The 13th International Congress on Yeasts will be held in Madison, WI, U.S.A., 26-30 August, 2012. The congress with the title 'Yeasts for a sustainable future' is a major event that may not be missed by anyone in the yeast area. Full information can be found here.

An illustrated handbook on fungal diversity, "The Genera of Hyphomycetes" with 997 pages compiled by Seifert et al. has just appeared as CBS Biodiversity Series No. 9. For information and ordering, click here.

A conference entitled "Candida Infection Biology – Fungal armoury, battlefields and host defences" will be held on 10-14 October, 2011 in Aquafredda di Maratea, Italy. The conference is likely to be of interest to many ISHAM members. For information, click here.

A new edition of Guy St-Germain & Richard Summerbell's book "Identifying Fungi" (378 pages) has appeared, see here.

A vacancy is available at CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre, Utrecht, The Netherlands, for a researcher in a DNA-barcoding project to characterize all fungal strains at CBS. The researcher will lead a team of up to 6 technicians dedicated to generating DNA sequence data of all strains in the Collection. See here for information and application. Starting August 2011, the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis in Leiden, The Netherlands offers five PhD positions for 36 hours per week in various projects on biodiversity. Click here for information.

A new journal, the Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Disease has been launched, which may be of interest for our members working on tropical fungi. See the website here.

A report from the 20th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), Vienna, Austria, 10-13 April 2010, can be found here. It was originally published in the journal Mykologie Forum.

To fill in the gap for fungi in the barcoding of life database (BOLD) the ITS1/2 region was selected as primary DNA barcoding marker for fungi until a careful evaluation of alternative genetic markers has been carried out at the recent meeting on fungal barcoding in Amsterdam 17/18.4.2011. We as medical mycologists have essentially already undertaken DNA barcoding for the identification of human pathogens for quite a time using either D1/D2 of the LSU, ITS1/2 of a number of other genetic loci. Arun Balajee (CDC), Sybren de Hoog (CBS) and Wieland Meyer (University of Sydney) have established a ISHAM working group on DNA barcoding of Medical fungi with the aim to establish a unified quality controlled sequence database to facilitate a fast molecular identification of human pathogens. With the upcoming TIMM-5 meeting in Valencia, 2-5. October 2011, we are proposing to organise the first meeting of the ISHAM working group, which will be open to all interested in sequence based identification. In order to organise a specific session at TIMM-5 we would like to asked you for your ability to attend TIMM-5 and also indicate to us if you use sequence based identification, and if so: (1) which genetic locus you are mostly using, and (2) if you have established an in house database containing quality controlled sequences, which are associated with morphological, biochemically identified isolates and have been sequenced in both directions. At the first meeting of the working group of DNA barcoding of Medical Fungi, we would like to discuss how we can integrate the various existing sequence databases and make them assessable the whole medical community. Please respond or send you suggestions to Wieland Meyer at w.meyer@usyd.edu.au by May 15, 2011.

A meeting on comparative genomics of Eukaryotic organisms entitled "Understanding the Complexity of Diversity" will be organized in Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain, 15-20 October, 2011. For information, click here.

Medical Mycology 49 issues 3 and 4 have appeared and is freely available in your member area. For your convenience we list the contents below: