Upcoming Annual Meeting

OUR MEETINGS

The Missouri Branch of ASM holds scientific meetings to foster networking and promote scientific endeavors and education. The meeting location rotates within the state of Missouri, with the exception of a virtual hosting during the 2020 SARS-CoV2 pandemic. 

These meetings have both didactic presentations and poster sessions where presenters can share their research. Presenters include graduate students, post-docs, and career investigators from universities and colleges within the state of Missouri. An ASM Distinguished Lecturer is also invited to give a keynote presentation.

Missouri Branch meetings are fun and exciting way to engage in the local scientific community, establish and strengthen professional relationships, and get in on the cutting edge of microbiology in the region!

Preferred payment options are PayPal or Venmo, but other options are listed in the registration form.

Abstract submission

Instructions for Abstract Submission (Due by Sunday, October 5th at 11:59 PM)

All students in the state doing microbiology related research are invited to submit abstracts for a poster session or oral presentation session at the Missouri Branch meeting on Saturday, October 19th. Since this is a small meeting, we will be accepting all student poster presentations submissions. However, if there is not enough time for all oral presentations, some oral presentation submissions may be asked to present a poster instead. To help us with that, please select your presentation preference at the top of the guidelines when you submit your abstract.

Submission

Email asmmissouribranch@gmail.com and include the properly formatted abstract by Sunday, October 5th at 11:59 using the instructions below. When you reply to this email you may either cut and paste

the abstract into the reply or attach it as a Word document. Please do not send the abstract as a pdf or screenshot. 

Questions: contact Matt at the email above or at matt.howell@westminster-mo.edu.

Guidelines

Poster preferences (Select one option)

_____ Poster presentation only

_____ Oral presentation only

_____ Poster preferred, oral presentation is second choice

_____Oral presentation preferred, poster presentation is second choice

Abstracts must be 250 words or less. Please use Times New Roman, 12-point font using Microsoft Word. Type the title first using title casing in bold font. Capitalize the first letter of each word except prepositions, articles, and names of species. Italicize the Latin binomial names of organisms. List all authors with an asterisk following the name of the person delivering the presentation. Follow the presenter’s name with their current educational level (doctoral, master’s, undergraduate, or high school) parenthetically between the name and asterisk so that students may be placed in the appropriate competition areas. For each author, list institutional affiliations and short addresses (city and state only). Submitted abstracts will not be edited, so please adhere to these guidelines, and check carefully for grammatical errors. An example is provided to you below. If you are presenting with a partner, please submit one abstract but place asterisks behind both student presenters’ educational level. An example is provided below.

Example Abstract

Relationship Between Extracellular Polysaccharide Expression and Propensity to Form Biofilms in

Clinical Isolates of Burkholderia multivorans. 

Sallie A. Ruskoski (Masters)*, Gerwald A. Köhler, and Franklin R. Champlin. Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Burkholderia multivorans is a gram-negative bacillus that causes opportunistic pulmonary infections in patients having underlying disease. It is hypothesized that the ability to adhere to host tissues is affected by bacterial cell surface properties and most strains are known to elaborate extracellular polysaccharide capsules comprised of disparate biopolymers. The purpose of the present study was to better characterize the cell surface physiology of a type reference strain and seven clinical isolates which represent virulence and colonial phenotypic variants. Microscopic observation, standard macrobroth dilution susceptibility, cell surface hydrophobicity, and biofilm formation analyses were employed to assess pertinent aspects of outer cell surface physiology among strains. The cell surface of the mucoid phenotype was found to be a function of extracellular polysaccharide expression and appeared to facilitate initiation of biofilm production, while being inversely related to cell surface hydrophobic properties. However, the outer cell envelopes of all strains were uniformly permeable to hydrophobic antimicrobial agents as suggested by their uniform minimal inhibitory concentrations. These data support the hypothesis that while extracellular polysaccharide production may affect the ability of B. multivorans to bind to host cells, it does not influence the accessibility of the outer cell surface to nonpolar antimicrobial agents.