This September saw the eighth edition of the prestigious Summer School in Applied Molecular Microbiology. This summer school traditionally takes place in Dubrovnik, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year it took place online. These summer schools were founded to recognise the development of interest in microbial metabolites that has resulted from the explosive development of sequencing technology, bioinformatics and chemical analysis, coupled with the need for new natural products with application in medicine (for example, new antibiotics) and agriculture. Member of the Organizing Committee and one of the founders of the summer school is Dušica Vujaklija, PhD, from the Ruđer Bošković Institute and Principal Investigator of project IP-2018-01-1754 “Identifying interactome of paralogous SSB proteins in a multicellular prokaryote, Streptomyces coelicolor”.

The title of this year’s summer school was Microbial Specialised Metabolites: Discovery, Biosynthesis and Evolution. One of the main topics of this year’s school was the search for new medications against super-bacteria due to increasing resistance of pathogenic microorganisms and cancer to existing medications and therapies. 

This year’s online edition of the summer school was attended by 37 young researchers from 18 countries, with the lecturers including well-respected scientists such as Professor Roberto Kolter from Harvard Medical School (USA), Professor Paul Jensen from the Scripps Oceanographic Institution (USA) and Professor Gerry Wright, McMaster University (Canada).