For the first time in its 107-year history, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) will hold its annual meeting outside the United States when it comes to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC) next week.

Featuring over 3,000 individual scientific presentations, the 107th ASM General Meeting will be held May 21-25.

The meeting is the largest annual gathering of microbiologists in the world and is expected to attract more than 12,000 attendees.

The MTCC anticipates this major convention will produce significant revenue for Toronto's hotels, restaurants, shops and entertainment venues, with an overall economic impact of approximately $19.2 million in direct spending.

Microbiologists study living organisms such as microbes, infectious agents such as bacteria and viruses, as well as fungi, algae and protozoa - some of these cause diseases, but many contribute to the balance of nature or are otherwise beneficial. The work of these scientists is critical to human health, agriculture, the environment and biotechnology.

Many accomplishments in the microbiological sciences have significantly affected our lives, such as the development of treatments for infectious diseases, the prevention of food spoilage, the use of microorganisms to clean up pollutants and basic knowledge of the nature of all living things. In fact, microbiology boasts some of the most illustrious names in the annals of science - Pasteur, Koch, Fleming, Leeuwenhoek, Lister, Jenner and Salk – and some of the greatest achievements for humankind.

The Toronto ASM meeting will showcase exciting advances and controversies in clinical microbiology and epidemiology, pathogenesis and host defense, general and applied microbiology, microbial physiology, genetics and molecular biology, environmental microbiology, parasitology and virology.

Among the topics to be presented are:

• How global warming is changing patterns of human disease worldwide
• Extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis: a greater threat than HIV?
• Diseases from produce and a possible source of the E. coli spinach utbreak
• The interface of science and art: microbial degradation of cultural heritage materials

The keynote lecture will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning author Professor Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University, who is considered by many to be the father of the modern environmental movement.

In his presentation, Wilson will draw on the ideas of his best-selling book, The Future of Life, to make a passionate and eloquent plea for a new approach to the management and protection of our eco-system.

Marshalling arguments from science, economics, and ethics, he demonstrates that proper stewardship of the earth's bio-diversity is not an option - it is a necessity, and a choice we must make if life is going to continue to thrive on the only home we have.

"As the first ASM General Meeting to be held outside the United States, this promises to be a truly memorable occasion," said Ferric Fang, Chair of the ASM General Meeting Program Committee. "Toronto, one of the world's most multi-cultural cities, provides an ideal backdrop for the breakthroughs in microbiology to be presented by scientists from around the globe."

"We are honoured to be welcoming such a prestigious group of medical research specialists to Toronto and to the MTCC," added Barry Smith, the Centre's CEO. "Microbiologists have done a great deal to improve quality of life worldwide," he said, noting that within the 20th century, a full third of all Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been bestowed upon microbiologists.