NCBS 2012 I: JA Fuerst

What a conference! You should have been there.

It was very very nice. Sincerely, one of the best conference I have been to. The conference was entitled Evolutionary Origins of Compartmentalized Cells. It was thus not strictly concerned with PVCs, but we had some interesting talks and discussion, including some pretty hot ones, about them. The protocoatomer hypothesis was present throughout the conference. Similarly, the LECA (Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor) was refereed to in many many talks. An agreement, as supported in many publications, is that the LECA must have been very very complex. After two talks on conservation and innovation in membrane traffic in a divergent eukaryote and on assembly of division ring, John Fuerst (Queensland Uni., Brisbane, Au) took the stage. He first gave a nice and quite complete review of the PVCs and their particular traits. He insisted quite rightly about the limits that classical searches based on sequence only seem to have reached. This was also a recurrent theme that we repeated throughout the conference. John then insisted on the difference between the planctomycete paryphoplasm and the classical bacterial periplasm. The data invoked to justify this difference were not so convincing and left most of the audience suspicious. He then presented a model of the gemmata nucleoid envelope that is supposed to completely surround the bacterial genetic material. Unfortunately, he didn't present the data from which this model was derived. He ended by presenting images and the reconstruction of a nuclear pore complex-like structure that is claimed to be found in the nucleoid envelope of the bacteria. The resolution was not great, but if confirmed this would represent an impressive achievement. However, some doubts about the identity and localization of this complex remains. The round of questions were dominated by a heated exchange with William Martin that strongly criticized the data presented and the claims about their relationships with the eukaryotes. Both sides stood on their claims and the discussion continued during the tea break.