September 11-14, 2023: three oral and one poster presentation at 14th EUCHIS / 15th ICCC / 1st IFCCS in Siglufjörður, Iceland

Finally, after so many years without any international chitin and chitosan conference, we met with about 100 colleagues from all over the world in far-off, charming Siglufjörður, the Northern-most town of Iceland. Getting there was an adventure for many of us, particularly those relying on Deutsche Bahn, but the place and the conference were worth every effort. Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher gave a key-note lecture on natural chitosans as the potential next generation of chitosans, providing evidence that chitosan is more widespread in nature than hitherto thought. Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr presented his new analytical tool for obtaining an almost comprehensive fingerprint of any chitosan solution with a single measurement that takes only minutes. Margareta Hellmann confronted the audience with her finding that contrary to common belief in the chitosan scientific community, commercial chitosans which are almost exclusively produced by partial heterogeneous deacetylation of chitin, possess rather regular patterns of acetylation and not, as believed by most, random patterns nor, as believed by some, blockwise patterns. And finally, Felizia Pöhlchen presented the identification and characterisation of our very special chitinosanase enzyme required for our enzymatic-mass spectrometric fingerprinting analyses, which she showed to be an entirely new class of chitosan hydrolases beyond the currently known chitinases and chitosanases. Others also had more or less spectacular new results and insights to share, and during intense discussions often conducted during the social events – a hike up the hills, a boat trip with fishing, a bus tour around the peninsula – many more ideas were born for future projects. The joy of finally meeting in person again contributed to the wonderful atmosphere of the conference. And the cloudless sky, with nothing but brilliant sunshine every day and magic Northern lights until long past midnight every night, was the Icelandic icing on the cake.