The Swiss Society of Microbiology, Section Prokaryotic Biology hosted a scientific symposium for PhD students and postdocs at the shore of Lake Geneva in the sale communale de Coppet (VD) on the 29th and 30th of October 2019. Up to 35 attendees gave scientific 20 min presentations (15 min talk plus 5 min Q&A) over two days with a single keynote talk from Prof Kristina Konas from Stockholm University on Tuesday evening, 29th of October. The event was co-sponsored by CUSO, SSM and ScNat and included delegates from UNIL, UNIGE, EPFL, UNIBE, ETHZ, UNIBAS, UNIZH and UNIFR.

The presentations and Q&A sessions were very stimulating and dealt with diverse topics in prokaryotic molecular biology, ranging from transcriptional and translational regulation in pathogenic (eg. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Vibrio cholerae and Salmonella enterica) and non-pathogenic bacteria (Caulobacter crescentus, Pseudomonas knackmussii and Escherichia coli), synthetic genome biology and genetic circuit engineering, modification and export of secondary metabolites and antibiotics by SAM splicease enzymes, polyketide synthases, beta-lactamases and drug efflux systems, and chromosome/plasmid maintenance and metal homeostatic regulation in Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus. Finally, several presentations detailed new findings on the molecular and cellular biology of cell envelope components in Mycobacteria, Acinetobacter baumannii, Vibrio cholerae and Streptococcus pneumoniae.

As events like this for students and postdocs in prokaryotic biology are not frequently occurring in Switzerland, the convenient access and stimulating setting lends itself for the event to recur in the Fall of 2021.