Microorganisms play important roles in many fields, from environment to biotechnology and human health. They are the most important source of unknown biodiversity on Earth. In microbiology, cells are often considered to be uniform populations which can be adequately described by average values. Consequently, measurement of the physiology and biochemistry of these cells often relies upon analysing either the culture supernatant or a lysate of all the cells in the population. The availability of tools such as flow cytometry and image analysis which allow measurements to be made on individual cells has changed our perception of microbes within the laboratory and natural environments. It has become increasingly clear that even pure populations derived from a single cell are far from homogeneous.

In recent years new methods have improved analysis of what occurs at the single cell level allowing us to begin to understand why cells and cultures behave in the way that they do. Monitoring expression of genes at the single-cell level via the use of reporters such as GFP and observing the presence and dynamics of sub-populations have added to our understanding of microbial physiology. The commercialisation of smaller, easy-to-use and cheaper instruments has widened access to these techniques. Such as the fourth meeting in Bad Schandau (Germany), the fifth meeting will include a variety of oral and poster sessions covering the following themes :

- New instrumental developments and new techniques
- Biotechnological applications
- Human health
- Screening and sorting
- Single cell approaches to cytomics, transcriptomics and proteomics
- Cell biology
- Multicellular organization
- Environmental applications
- Data anlysis and mathematical modelling of microbial life

This conference is dedicated to professors, researchers, post-doctoral research associates, Ph.D students, and technicians who aim to learn and exchange skills and expertise in the field of analysis of microorganisms at the single cell level.

This Conference is organised on behalf of the European Federation of Biotechnology - "Microbial Physiology" Section.