The next regional workshop organised by the EU FP7 project ‘RuminOmics’ will be held in Edinburgh, UK on the 10th & 11th of November 2015. The workshop is free to attend, and the registration deadline is the 30th of October. More details can be found here.
Biogas and Anaerobic Fungi
Interested in biogas production? Why not have a look at this book that was recently published: http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319219929
There is even a special chapter in it dedicated to specifically to anaerobic fungi 🙂
International Conference on Sustainable Ruminant Livestock Production
Following the high level of interest and feedback generated by the Global Farm Platform position paper published as the Comment ‘Steps to Sustainable Livestock’ (Nature 507, 32-34, 2014), an International Conference on sustainable ruminant livestock production is planned to be held in Bristol 12-15 January 2016. For more details please see: http://www.globalfarmplatform.org/conference-intro/
Oontomyces paper – FREE
The journal Fungal Biology has kindly provided the final version of the Oontomyces paper for free (until 16th Sept) for anyone interested in reading about the latest new anaerobic fungal genus 🙂
New rumen microbiology book :)
A brand new rumen microbiology book is out now – with a whole chapter just about anaerobic fungi!!!
Rumen fistulation : a valuable tool for exploring the role of rumen microbes
Please check out our facebook page for a recent video that was shared there regarding rumen fistulation.
Rumen fistulation is a key methodological approach used to understand the role of anaerobic fungi (as well as other microorganisms) within the rumen. There are many different feelings about these kind of approaches, but I would just like to highlight the only other alternative way to obtain a representative rumen digesta sample is to euthanize an animal every time a sample is required. Therefore rumen fistulation is not only a key experimental tool (enabling repeated and/or temporal sampling of the rumen) but enables minimisation of the number of animals used in research without compromising the ability to deliver applied outcomes that have a real impact in terms of food security and environmental footprint.
ISAM-9 & Anaerobic fungi :)
At the recent ISAM-9 symposium there was much interest in anaerobic fungi across a range of applications from novel metabolite production, biogas production, methane mitigation and bio-remediation. There was also an informal network get together organised at the conference (big thank you Tony Callaghan!) where a variety of different anaerobic fungal interests and topics were discussed.
Photo competition winner: image details
Colin Orpin loved Tony Callaghan’s figure as it showed both the basic morphology of a mature plant and the growth of the germinated zoospores that had invaded the plant tissue. It also nicely demonstrated both ‘ends’ of the vegetative stage of the growth cycle.
Tony’s winning image is now featured on our website 🙂
Photo competition results!!
The network recently held a photo competition, which Colin Orpin kindly agreed to judge. Colin had 59 entries to choose from and paid particular attention to the quality of the image, its significance and originality.
I am delighted to announce that Tony Callaghan from Aberystwyth University was placed first (see new image on our website).
Yanfen Cheng of Nanjing Agricultural University and Sumit Singh Dagar of Agharkar Research Institute were placed second and third respectively (images to follow soon…)
Well done everyone!!
Oontomyces – a brand new genus!
Delighted to announce the publication of a brand new anaerobic fungal genus: Oontomyces! That’s eight genera now…Perhaps one of the most intriguing things about this genus is that it appears to be camelid specific. Further details about the new genus can be found in the recent Fungal Biology paper where its discovery was reported.