Final Activity Report Summary - ATP-BCT (Advance training programme in bacterial cell biology and transcriptome analysis) In the last year of the project the four PhD students used the first few months to finalise their experimental work and in the beginning of 2010 they started writing up their PhD thesis. Pamela Gamba and Rok Lenarcic submitted their theses before the September deadline, i.e. the official University deadline, and Pamela successfully defended her thesis on 09 November 2010. Rok was planned to defend his thesis on 11 February 2011, and we were confident that he would pass this exam with ease. The two other PhD students, Muhammet (Erkam) Gundogdu and Katarina Surdova were still working on their theses. Both students were delayed because of visa issues in case of Erkam, and pregnancy in case of Katarina. It was anticipated that they would submit their thesis in the beginning of 2011. In the last year of the project we trained four more short term fellowships, namely Suey van Baarle, Frank Buermann, Diana Wolf and Daniela Pinto. The aims of the proposal were to provide first class multidisciplinary training in molecular microbiology with emphasis on cell biology and transcriptome analysis. The original proposal was based on the training of four long term three years fellows towards a PhD and the training of eight short term six month fellows. The research training of the four long term fellows went well and the research of all trainees generated significant data that allowed them to write a thesis. Pamela Gamba had already defended her thesis successfully and Rok Lenarcic had handed in his thesis and would defend it soon. Katarina's thesis writing encountered some delays as she became pregnant. After maternity leave she would finalise her thesis, which should be no problem since there was enough material for at least two good publications. Erkam Gundogdu's writing proceeded more slowly and this was partially due to problems with his visa. He received an extension for the thesis submission by the University and we anticipated that he would submit his thesis in the spring of 2011. Fortunately, he had more than enough material for his thesis and part of his work was published in the high impact European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) Journal. Erkam was first author on this paper. The training of short term fellows was a great success and the programme turned out to be very popular. Eventually, we were able to train 11 short term fellows. The fact that we trained three more short term fellows than we had originally planned was possible because not all fellows were able to follow the complete six months period and visited the institute for a three months period. All fellows, both short and long term, received extensive training in bacterial cell biology and learned to use high-end fluorescence light microscopy along with the use and interpretation of image data. Two of the long term fellows and one short term fellow also received training in transcriptome analyses at Oxford University. All of the long term fellows and most of the short term fellows gained intensive training in molecular microbial techniques. Finally, one of the objectives of the Marie Curie host fellowships for early stage training was the reinforcement of the training capabilities of research institutes. Our Marie Curie training project clearly achieved this goal, particularly since the project became active at a perfect moment when a new centre dedicated to fundamental bacterial research was instated. This new centre, titled 'Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology' (CBCB) was housed in a brand new modern research building and was occupied by a number of world class research groups that studied basic bacterial research questions (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cbcb/). Our Marie Curie project generated a lot of attention to this new centre and enabled us to provide expert training in bacterial cell biology for many young European scientists.
