ISHAM NEWS! (14-06-2011)

Dear , The Fifth International Conference on Mycetoma held last April 2011 in Khartoum, Sudan, was a great success. The congress proceedings can be viewed here. Take the opportunity to have a look at the very informative website of the Mycetoma Research Center at Khartoum.

The ISHAM Working Group on Cystic Fibrosis plans a next meeting in Angers, France, 1-2 September, 2011. Information and registration details will be available from Jean-Philippe Bouchara.

A one-day meeting on Host-Fungal Interactions : Pathogenicity versus Immunity will be held in London, U.K. on 21 October, 2011. The website with full program and information can be found here.

The recent symposium on fungal nomenclature held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands last May came up with the "Amsterdam declaration", which is a recommendation to change the rules of botanical nomenclature to abandon double names (anamorph / teleomorph) and also to facilitate description of molecular species. The declaration can be found here. The item is still under discussion; some contra-opinions are available upon request (use contact button).

The Case of Month was indeed a disseminated sporotrichosis, as was commented correctly in the discussion forum, despite the pedal lesions which looked like chromoblastomycosis. The patient was treated with itraconazol, 400 mg per day for six months. All skin and mucosal lesions healed with scarring and after treatment he presented bilateral ectropion and lymphedema as sequelae. The ectropion was surgically treated. After two years of follow up, he did not present clinical nor histological or mycological evidences of relapse.

The next congress of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS) is scheduled July 27 – August 1, 2014 in Montreal, Canada. The website is still under construction, but you may put the date in your agenda already.

ISHAM welcomes a new Working Group: Sporothrix schenckii Cell Wall and Host-Fungus Interplay, coordinated by Leila Lopes Bezerra and Hector Mora Montes. Some first information can be found here. For membership and info, please contact the conveners at leila.lopes_bezerra@pq.cnpq.br and h.mora@abdn.ac.uk, respectively.

A report of the Course in Medical Mycology held in Chendu, China, can be found here.

For the ISHAM Congress in Berlin, Germany, June 11-15, 2012, fifteen poster prizes will be given to the best posters. Young investigators will have enough opportunity to display their material. Detailed information on these and other awards and stipends for Berlin will become available very soon.

A new open-access database on fungal physiology has become available: the fung+growth database offers the opportunity to directly compare the ability of fungi to use a a wide diversity of carbon sources. It will link to genome annotation databases (e.g. CAZY) to enable correlation analysis between growth profiling and genomes, providing more insights into the molecular basis of carbon utilisation.

The ISHAM Aspergillus terreus Working Group has been renovated; Cornelia Lass-Floerl, Cornelia.Lass-Floerl@uibk.ac.at is the new convener. Updated information can be found here. Anyone with interest in this area is stimulated to join.

Te BP Biofuel Center in San Diego, California, USA has jobs available for motivated fungal and yeast geneticists; information can be found here.