Ciao Gianluca… One microbial ecology course in Pallanza? Of course, yes! This is one of the nicest spots in Europe and is one of the founding places of Limnology, the science that studies inland aquatic ecosystems! Gianluca at the mail: “don’t worry, everything will be under control”… of course is, and with bonuses: Ian coming from the US, gets a promotion to Business class. Since my trip is shorter, I get another prize: a spectacular rainbow from one side of the lake right to one of the islands… will there be a treasure in the island?
First night we get a taste of true neapolitanean pizza, or that is what everyone says (with approval by the neapolitaneans autochthones in the gang). I can’t remember the name of what I ate in my pizza: it looked like spinaches but someone said those were the leaves of the broccoli… anyway, it was good. Those of us staying at the Europalace Hotel are surprised by the rooms we get: they are about 7 m long and 5 meters wide! We could fit a nice party inside this room, including the whole of the orchestra! The funny thing is since the TV is a small 18-inch set, and since the room is so wide, from the bed you see a small screen! (anyway, to watch Berlusconi’s face, there’s no need of a wider screen…).
We get to visit the lab on Tuesday morning. I have to admit that the images of the limnological pioneers sampling lakes in the Dolomites are what impressed me more. Well, and the Daphnia and Bosmina framing the entrance door. We should suggest a small change for the future: some Polynucleobacter, Synechochoccus or Archaea are as relevant as the Bosmina in terms of the lake ecology, we’d like to see a door framed by two microbes… although I agree, they are less sexy and glamorous and since we are not too far away from Milano fashion factories (and not too far away from George Clooney’s house)… so maybe after all the Daphnia and the Bosmina are the right images to have. Now that I think of it… the long “hair” of the calanoids is also quite fashionable…
After some more pizza for lunch (and several types of prosciutto-like pork derivatives), we start the course. The room is very nice, and the speakers get to have an image of the Cervino at their backs. One funny and surprising (to me) thing is that almost all students have their portable computer open in front of them. PC beats Mac by far. A fast overview tells me that Windows beats Linux also by far… Nobody seems to be using the computer to takes notes, but everyone is very interested in the wireless connection…there is nothing better than a small computer chat while listening to Pep Gasol’s talk! (I’m kidding,: I was looking at the eyes of all students when I was talking and all seemed to be listening…). A video camera at the back of the room and the threat of being broadcasted to the whole wide world is a devil plan to get speakers nervous… At least three persons told me afterwards that they checked internet to see my talk. Fortunately (?) they all got bored and didn’t watch the talk. Ca. 40 people did get connected according to the organizers…from Us, Germany, Czech Republic, and Spain… wow! I talk after the presentations: Roberto introduces the lake, the place, the society and the course. What strikes me more is the depth of the lake and the (relatively) fast water renovation time. No big story about my talk: as usual I talk too much, try to show too many slides, and try to make jokes nobody likes… My plan is to give first an overview of the changes in our conception about the aquatic ecosystem food webs since the 60’s, remarking the order and the reason for the changes. One of my points is that we are now (after 2000 I would say) in a gold era of aquatic microbial ecology, with new techniques and surprising findings every few months… I try to be with one leg on freshwater and one leg on seawater but is difficult. I’m marine biased… and planktocentric: sorry for all students interested in benthos and even more sorry for those doing terrestrial microbial ecology. Ian takes over after my talk and gives a very nice overview of molecular techniques, from fingerprinting to sequencing to qPCR, metagenomics, SIP, nanoSIMMS, pyrosequencing, BAC, fosmid, Sanger, … and a whole list of concepts and names! He manages to get it very well organized, however, and I underline his conclusion ”No method is perfect. Al tools have advantages and disadvantages. Choose appropriate tool for question being asked, and remember that technologies evolve fast”…
After the talks, the students introduce themselves showing what they are doing in front of a small poster in the main library room. All but one use Italian so I might have lost some details, but I’m listening very few times the word “hypothesis” and lots of times details of the specific system under study. I’m tempted to say what I think… i) that since today science needs to be communicated in English, we should try to practice our English as much as possible at any occasion so that it improves. Else, we will always be at a lost when competing with our colleagues that happen to have English as a mother language. And ii) that if we want our science to have impact and be cited, we should stress our hypotheses and their general applicability instead of focussing on the specific problem we want to solve. I always tell my students: think big, even if working in a very specific small place, but avoid saying in the title or the abstract that you worked there “because it was interesting”, “because it has been well studied” or “because is the largest –or smallest, or deepest- lake”: you studied a “general” problem, and did so in the closest-to-home available place.

We go for an “aperitivo” to what I now know is the only decent pub around town. The famous Estremadura Café! 20 minutes walk by the lake and the most incredible “menú” list I have ever seen: one has to go every night in the next 2 years just to have enough time to read the book through! Dinner has been organized in a small village about 20 min away by car. We go for seafood in what they claim is one of the best places in northern Italy… I am skeptic but the place is a blast. We order spaghetti with “frutti di mare” and you can’t see the spaghetti because they are covered with the largest pile of clams, shrimp and other phylogenetically related marine eukaryotes I have ever seen. And that is just the starter ! By the way… after dinner we stop over again at Estremadura café…

Next day the things that really matter (to most students…) start. The Stefano’s talk about Fish, Card-Fish, and Mar-Fish. Mauro Tonolla, from Switzerland talks about MALDI-TOFF mass spectrometry as a way to identify, tell apart, and classify bacteria. I’m told that I should notice his Italian accent being much different from other people’s, but I can assure I hear no differences… I know too little of Italian to be able to say. Gianluca with ARISA, Luigi with clone libraries and Manuela illustrate us about the different flavours of metagenomics. Well, Manuela illustrates the audience but also puts questions to everyone, and doesn’t let the students get distracted! I was all the time fearing she would ask me to see whether I was listening to her!!! The day ends with a talk by the Promega people, which have contributed to the course organization: they present a new DNA extractor.

The main diner is offered in Albergo Italia: here I realized why I can say that the course was extremely well organized: I needed to know what was the result of the Chelsea-Barça match for reaching the Champions League final. And yes, the hotel had a TV set. Then Barça was losing all the time… but the restaurant owner was telling me that he had made arrangements –he was looking at the sky simultaneously- for me to be happy… and Barça scored the definitive goal in minute 93 ! Yes, this was the best organization ever… By the way the restaurant owner was a curious fellow… he wanted to have us play a game and he asked permission to Gianluca saying whether he “could make everyone very happy”… Gianluca was fearing the worst when he said OK… it was only a Mummy-with-toilet-paper contest. We soon decided that happiness had little to do with mummies and toilet paper and that, instead, Estremadura café was the place to be!

Unfortunately I left Pallanza the next day. In the morning we did a very inspiring labor division: while the students were having practicals supervised by the Stefanos and Gianluca, the invited teachers went out for sightseeing and sun-taking. Raffa, Ian and I (S. Fazi should have come with us…) went to visit the islands on the lake. Got the message? Students working, postdocs and junior scientists supervising them, and senior scientists out on the lake taking the sun! Isola Madre, Isola Bella and Isola dei Pescatori are very nice although some feeling of being on a tourist trap (and increasing the already large bank accounts of the Borromeo family) can’t be avoided… I left the place after the tourist trip and right before Raffa’s and Anita’s presentations about flow cytometry. I know them, and I am sure the presentations were nice and clear. I also missed O’Connors Irish Pub and wondered whether there was any hangover effects in the audience of Ian’s metatranscriptomics presentation after the night at the pub…

I believe the students at the course were happy to find each other with similar questions, to create a sense of community. I hope the contents of the course helped them, but I presume it was the fact of getting together what might accelerate the growth of Italian aquatic microbial ecology. I’m really happy to have been invited to participate in the workshop (and help a little with the objective), and I forecast a brilliant future to those organizing the workshop if they keep the enthusiasm with which they worked.