Report CBS Symposium Week 2015
April 20-24 2015
The Second International Workshop on Ascomycete Systematics
The Second International Workshop on Ascomycete Systematics was recently
held in Amsterdam (April 22-24), organised by the CBS-KNAW Fungal
Biodiversity Centre. The first two days were at the premises of the
Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (“KNAW”) and the final day was
held in a beautiful meeting room at Artis Zoo. There were 150 attendees
and speakers from all over the world, including 50 Postdocs and
students. All participants look back on a highly successful meeting with
many interesting talks and speakers and time for networking. All
attendees were also invited to visit MICROPIA,
the new exhibition at the Artis Zoo, to “meet their microbes”, a
wonderful experience. As part of our mission to promote mycology and
share this important meeting with the global community, all talks were
captured digitally. Talks from those mycologists that gave permission
for their presentations to be shared, can now be viewed on youtube:
The topic of next year’s symposium is: Fungi and One Health. This
symposium will focus on plant, animal and human health, also underlining
the industrial applications emerging for fungi. Dates: 14 and 15 April,
2016. Mark your agenda!
Report Genomics of Neglected Pathogens
 As a Satellite of the CBS Spring Symposium Week, a workshop Genomics of Neglected Pathogens was organised at the CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Centre on 20-21
April, 2015. With close to seventy participants, human pathogens and
opportunists like Coccidioides, Sporothrix, black yeasts, and other
significant but frequently overlooked fungi were put in the spotlight.
Genomes of several opportunists often with fascinating natural ecologies
have recently become available or will be sequenced in near future.
Joint initiatives were started as outcome of the workshop to analyse
these data. A selection of papers from these initiatives has been agreed
upon to be published in journals like Studies in Mycology,
PLoS Genetics and others. The workshop was organized by Sybren de Hoog,
Benjamin Stielow, Anne van Diepeningen, and Bert Gerrits van den Ende.
We thank the sponsors of this workshop ISHAM, ECMM, Astellas and
Elsevier.
 Report Yeasts Taxonomy Workshop
About 30 yeast taxonomist from all around the globe gathered at CBS on
April 20 and 21 to discuss how to implement an updated taxonomy based on
DNA data. The current classification at the genus level is still
largely based on morphology and secondly the separate classifications
for asexual and sexual names needs to be combined in one. This will have
major implications for some of the most important clinical yeasts, such
as some candida and Cryptococcus species, but this is also highly
important for the biotech/food industries, as well as for ecologists in
their metagenomics studies. Good progress was made and priorities were
set in order to have these reclassifications done at the end of 2015. |
DNA Barcoding Conference 3 June 2015
For 5 years Naturalis and CBS-KNAW have co-operated with actual and
potential users, taxonomists and dedicated laboratories to built up an
extensive reference database of DNA Barcodes of groups including fungi
of medical and quarantine importance and invasive plant species of the
Netherlands. The collaboration between all partners has proven to be
extremely successful. The knowledge base is now ready for use in all
domains where reliable species identification is essential, including
forensics, medical entomology, and ecosystem studies using
metabarcoding. The activities were all facilitated by a grant of the
Fonds Economische Structuurversterking to Naturalis and CBS-KNAW.
The results of the project and prospects for future use of DNA
barcoding will be the topic of a one-day symposium to be held on 3 June
2015 in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht.
For more information on the programme go to: dna barcoding programme Participation is free, but advance registration is compulsory. To register for the conference, please click here
Questions or cancellation of registration, please send an E-mail to barcodingsymposium@naturalis.nl
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 Studies in Mycology No. 80
Hypocrealean lineages of industrial and phytopathological importance
Editors: L. Lombard, J.Z. Groenewald and P.W. Crous.
Details: 245 pp., fully illustrated with colour pictures (A4 format), paperback, 2015.
Price: € 70,-
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Winner of YOUNG ISHAM poster
 Abdullah Al-Hatmi, PhD student at the medical mycology group
(The Fungal Biodiversity Centre (CBS), University of Amsterdam, the
Netherlands) won the prize for best young ISHAM poster at this year’s
ISHAM 2015 Conference (ISHAM2015) in Melbourne, Australia. The winning
poster “Emergence of fusarioses in a university hospital in Turkey
during a 20-year period” was selected from a set of excellent candidates
based on technical evaluations and the award committee vote. Abdullah
was awarded his prize during the ISHAM2015 closing plenary session on 8th of May 2015.
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CBS-KNAW
congratulates ISHAM on choosing Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as the venue for
the 20th Congress of the International Society for Human and Animal
Mycology on 2-6 July 2018.
