Bacillus ACT 2021 9th International Conference on Bacillus anthracis, cereus and thuringiensis April 26-28, 2021 Online Table of contents CONTACTS 3 GUIDELINES FOR ATTENDING THE MEETING 4 SPONSORS 5 PROGRAM 7 EPIDEMIOLOGY, ECOLOGY AND ADAPTATION 7 PHYSIOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT (1) 8 PHYSIOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT (2) 8 HOST-PATHOGEN INTERACTIONS 9 SPORE PROPERTIES 10 GENOMIC, PHYLOGENY AND MOBILE ELEMENTS 10 TOXINS AND THERAPIES 11 NEXT BACILLUS ACT CONFERENCE 13 ABSTRACTS 15 SPEAKERS 52 2 Contacts Steering committee Tjakko Abee (Wageningen University, the Netherlands) Rakesh Bhatnagar (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) Steven Blanke (Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign, USA) Monika Ehling-Schulz (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria) Arthur M. Friedlander (USAMRIID, USA) Michel Gohar (INRAE Jouy-en-Josas, France) Jean-Nicolas Tournier (IRBA, France) Organizing committee Véronique Broussolle (INRAE Avignon, France) Michel Gohar (INRAE Jouy-en-Josas, France) Leyla Slamti (INRAE, Jouy-en-Josas, France) Jean-Nicolas Tournier (IRBA, France) Session chairs Steve Blanke (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) Frédéric Carlin (INRAE Avignon, France) Theodor Chitlaru (Israel Institute for Biological Research, Israel) Monika Ehling-Schulz (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria) Arthur M. Friedlander (USAMRIID, USA) Annika Gillis (UCLouvain, Belgium) Theresa Koehler (UTHealth, USA) Didier Lereclus (INRAE Jouy-en-Josas, France) Jacques Mahillon (UCLouvain, Belgium) Anne Moir (University of Sheffield, UK) Ole Andreas Økstad (University of Oslo, Norway) Ben Raymond (University of Exeter, UK) 3 Guidelines for attending the meeting The BACT 2021 conference will be held on the Zoom webinar platform. There is no need to create a Zoom account or download any software. You can access the webinar by clicking on the link that was sent to you a few days prior to the meeting. Please do not share this link and do not post it online. You can check if the link is operational a few days in advance. Please let us know if you have any issue with it at [email protected]. For optimal experience, it is best to use a landline connection rather than Wi-Fi. We have allocated 20 min per presentation: 15 min maximum for data sharing and the remainder for discussion. For a smooth running of the conference, and out of respect for all the participants, it is essential that the speakers respect this rule. Questions should be written down in the chat panel during and after the presentation and will be directed to the speaker by the session chairs at the end of the presentation. We ask the participants not to record any presentation, as some data might be unpublished. There will be 3 types of participants during the meeting: - Hosts (organizing committee) - Panelists (speakers and session chairs) - Attendees (all other participants) All participants will be Attendees by default when entering the webinar. At the beginning of each session, the Hosts will change the status of the moderators and the speakers of the session to Panelists. During the switch, the connection will be interrupted but will resume within a few seconds. Microphones and cameras are operational for both Hosts and Panelists. To preserve bandwidth, only the hosts, speakers and chairs of each session will turn their cameras on. Using a videoconference platform such as Zoom webinar should hopefully not pose too many difficulties and many of us have been using these means of communication for a while now. However, if you feel that you need more information, please visit the Zoom website (https://zoom.us/). We thank you for your support and for joining us for the BACT 2021 online conference. We wish you a pleasant and scientifically rich meeting. 4 Sponsors We thank our sponsors for their generous support 5 We also thank the following people for their precious assistance Ludovic Bridoux (INRAE, Jouy-en-Josas, France) for the website maintenance Céline Gautier and the Micalis administrative staff (INRAE, Jouy-en-Josas, France) for the registration and finance management 6 Program The schedule corresponds to the time in Paris, France. Monday, April 26 14h00 – 14h10 Welcome address 14h10 – 14h30 Introduction Arthur M. Friedlander, Senior scientist | United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Frederick, MD and Department of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, USA. Epidemiology, ecology and adaptation Ben Raymond (University of Exeter, UK) and Jacques Mahillon (UCLouvain, Belgium) 14h30 – 14h50 Adaptation of Bacillus thuringiensis to plant colonisation affects differentiation and toxicity #1 Yicen Lin, PhD student | Bacterial Interactions and Evolution Group, DTU Bioengineering, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark 14h50 – 15h10 The fate of bacteria of the Bacillus cereus group in the amoeba environment #2 Haibo Chen, PhD student | Micalis Institute, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, Jouy-en-Josas, France 15h10 – 15h30 Immunological evidence of host variation in exposure and resistance to anthrax in Kruger and Etosha National Parks #3 Sunday Ochai, PhD student | Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, Onderstepoort, South Africa 15h30 – 15h50 Anthrax: A comprehensive review describing the clinical features of reported hospitalized cases for all routes of infection published in the english literature, 1880-2018 #4 Katherine Hendricks, Senior scientist | Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta GA, USA 15h50 – 16h10 Environmental and genetic factors affecting Bacillus anthracis spore concentrations at anthrax carcass sites #5 Zoë R. Barandongo, PhD student | Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI, USA Break 7 Physiology and development (1) Monika Ehling-Schulz (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria) and Theresa Koehler (UTHealth, USA) 16h30 – 16h50 Bacillus anthracis’ S-layer is a cell envelope load-bearing component #6 Antonella Fioravanti, Post-doctoral fellow | Structural and Molecular Microbiology, Structural Biology Research Center, VIB and Structural Biology Brussels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium 16h50 – 17h10 A model for the early steps of SCWP assembly in the Bacillus cereus sensu lato group #7 Anastasia Tomatsidou, Post-doctoral fellow | Howard Taylor Ricketts Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont IL, USA 17h10 – 17h30 The putative different roles of tasA and calY in the biofilm formation of B. cereus #8 Ana Álvarez-Mena, PhD student | Institute for Mediterranean and Subtropical Horticulture "La Mayora", Spanish National Research Council–University of Malaga, Spain 17h30 – 17h50 Motility and biofilm regulation in the B. cereus group – identification of the conserved motility genes cdgL and mogR #9 Ole Andreas Økstad, Senior scientist | Section for Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Department of Pharmacy, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 17h50 – 18h10 Role of materials types and positions on the Bacillus cereus [Bc-98/4] fouling and its resistance to cleaning #10 Piyush Kumar Jha, Post-doctoral fellow | UMET, Univ. Lille, CNRS, INRAE, ENSCL, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France 18h10 – 18h30 Towards the characterization of an alternative survival mode during infection in Bacillus thuringiensis #11 Hasna Toukabri, PhD student | Micalis Institute, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, Jouy-en-Josas, France Tuesday, April 27 Physiology and development (2) Monika Ehling-Schulz (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria) and Theresa Koehler (UTHealth, USA) 14h00 – 14h20 The activation of σP, an ECF σ factor that controls β-lactam resistance in Bacillus thuringiensis, cereus, and anthracis #12 Kelsie Nauta, PhD student | Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Iowa, Iowa City IA, USA 8 14h20 – 14h40 Identification of the extracytoplasmic function σ factor σP regulon in Bacillus thuringiensis #13 Theresa D. Ho, Post-doctoral fellow | Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City IA, USA 14h40 – 15h00 Transcriptomic response to oxidative stress of Bacillus anthracis htrA-disrupted and parental wild type strains #14 Galia Zaide, Senior scientist | Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Israel Institute for Biological Research, Ness-Ziona, Israel Host-pathogen interactions Didier Lereclus (INRAE Jouy-en-Josas, France) and Steve Blanke (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) 15h00 – 15h20 Branched-chain amino acid metabolism and virulence in Bacillus anthracis #15 Soumita Dutta, Post-doctoral fellow | Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston TX, USA 15h20 – 15h40 Distinct contribution of the HtrA protease and PDZ domains to its function in stress resilience and virulence of Bacillus anthracis #16 Ofer Cohen, Senior scientist | Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Israel Institute for Biological Research, Ness-Ziona, Israel 15h40 – 16h00 The sequence of the universal bacterial DNA repair protein Mfd dictates the pathogenicity of Bacillus cereus strains #17 Delphine Cormontagne, PhD student | Micalis Institute, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, Jouy-en-Josas, France Break 16h20 – 16h40 AtxA-controlled small RNAs of Bacillus anthracis virulence plasmid