Applications are warmly invited for a summer school on “Microbial Specialised Metabolites: Discovery, Biosynthesis and Evolution”, the eighth in the series of John Innes – Rudjer Bošković Summer Schools on Applied Molecular Microbiology, to be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 5-12, 2020. Full details, including the availability of grants to attend the summer school, are at https://www.jic.ac.uk/training-careers/summer-schools/applied-molecular-microbiology/.

The summer school reflects the recent development of interest in microbial metabolites that has resulted from the sequencing of small molecule-producing microorganisms, coupled with the current explosive development of sequencing technology, bioinformatics and chemical analysis. Ecological studies highlighting the wide range of roles for small molecules in microbial communities provide another major driving force. These summer schools have established a reputation for the quality of the faculty and participants (around 45) and the high degree of productive interaction during the week-long courses. A special feature of the summer school will be hands-on computer workshops to interrogate genome sequences and analyse natural product gene clusters.