Abstract
The “Yeasts: Products, Discovery and More” (YPD) meeting of the Australasian Yeast Network and the New Zealand Microbiological Society Eukaryotic Special Interest Group, was held at Massey University in Albany, Auckland, New Zealand between the 23rd and 25th of November 2013. The meeting attracted approximately 60 delegates, predominantly from Australia and New Zealand, and a number of invited speakers from Europe and the USA. This travel grant enabled Dr Joanna Sundstrom, based at the University of Adelaide, to attend the conference to present current wine yeast research and to meet with other Australasian researchers working in relevant areas of yeast research.
Summary
Dr Joanna Sundstrom is a post-doctoral researcher in the Wine Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology (WMMB) group at The University of Adelaide, supervised by Professor Vladimir Jiranek. Dr Sundstrom attended the YPD meeting to present her current research, via an oral presentation, entitled “Investigating the effect of quorum signalling molecules on wine yeast strains and their impact on alcoholic fermentation”. The abstract for this talk can be found in Appendix 1. In addition, attendance at this meeting provided an opportunity to meet and network with other researchers from the Australasian yeast research community.
The YPD meeting consisted of ten main sessions held over three days incorporating seven plenary speakers (see below), thirty seminar presentations and nine research posters. The YPD program can be found in Appendix 2. The main conference themes were;
• Cellular & Molecular Biology
• Industrial Yeasts & Their Applications
• Yeasts in Medicine and Medically Relevant Yeasts
• ‘Omics, Systems Biology, and Beyond
• Fungi other than Yeasts