On April 11, the first conference of the CCC under our responsibility was held. Thanks to the organizing committee, Janneke and Johanna, with some last help of Bea and Anmara, we had a successful conference in hotel Best Western in Groningen.
The conference was also the first conference of prof Colja Laane as the chairman of the supervisory board. Colja succeeded prof Rudy Rabbinghe who stepped down from the board in 2017. The board-membership of Sibrand Poppema in the supervisory board is taken up by prof Jasper Knoester, dean of the faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen.
The CCC conference was attended by approximately 100 scientists. In the morning dr. Maik Kindermann from DSM (Zurich) gave a lecture how to reduce the methane exhaust from cows by 30%. DSM discovered that 3-NOP (3-nitrooxypropanol) was a very good and specific inhibitor of the methane production by Archaea in the rumen of cows. The inhibitor is administered to the cow via the feed and had no visible impact on the health and behavior of the cows. The inhibition was reversible and stopping the feeding of 3-NOP to the cow, methane production returned.
After the presentation of dr Kindermann we had a two sessions separated by the lunch presentations from the Carbobiotics and Carbokinetics CCC-NWO research programs. Also this time, we used the Pecha-Kucha format: In a presentation with maximal 20 slides and auto-forward of 1 slide/20 sec, the researchers showed a summary of their exciting results to the public. For more details on the projects, posters were presented during the, well attended, poster session after lunch.
The second plenary lecture was given by prof dr. Bas Teusink from the VU in Amsterdam. Bas explained the growth of some model organisms from a mathematical point of view. Especially, he touched upon the topic of substrate selection. One of the remarkable results were that the length of the stationary growth phase in diauxic growth was dependent on the amount of cells (more cells, shorter stationary phase). He explained this that the stationary phase is not the time that is needed for the cells to adjust for the consumption of the 2nd substrate but that there is only a small percentage of the cells in a population that were prepared for the substrate switch and could metabolize the 2nd substrate to continue growing. The other cells just ran out of the 1st substrate and had not sufficient energy anymore to recover.
The jury, Arjan Nauta, Geert Bruggeman, and Daisy Jonkers (presentations) and Dirk-Jan Reijngoud, Lizette Oudhuis, and Myrthe Gilbert (posters) had a difficult job to determine the winners for the best presentation and best poster award. We thank the jury for their effort in assessing the presentations and posters.
Prof Rudy Rabbinghe, handed over the Ruddy Rabbinghe award for the best presentation to Melany Morales en Mara Trijp and the Ruddy Rabbinghe award for best poster was awarded to Eva Jermendi. Congratulations to the three of you.
Before Colja Laane closed the conference with some concluding remarks we had to say goodbye to three people that were heavily involved in the organization of the CCC. First of all, Bea and Anmara were warmly thanked for all their help in generating ideas, organizing events, making appointments and administrative work during 10 years of CCC. Secondly, Wim Huizinga will retire from the first of May 2019. Wim was a great help to the CCC the last four years as business director. He carefully organized the details around financing, research contracts, funding proposals, and final reports. Moreover, he initiated the revival of the newsletters, the CCC brochure, and organized that our website is up to date.
In the end, we look back at a successful conference and already looking forward to the next conference at the end of the year. With this conference we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Carbohydrate Competence Center. See you all in November/December 2019.
Gert-Jan Euverink
Henk Schols.
Various photos were taken during the Open CCC Symposium on 11 April 2019.
Below an overview.
Open CCC Symposium 2019 Impression
CCC 2019 1
CCC 2019 2
