In a week in which the US raised its terror alert to "high" following renewed threats, 8500 microbiologists congregated at Washington DC's new convention center to discuss how best to prepare for possible bioterrorist attacks. But national security was by no means the only item on their agenda, with papers covering diverse fields from Staphylococcus contamination of the Turin shroud to rechargeable batteries of the future powered by a bacterial biofilm.

In fact, as Ferric Fang, vice chair of the ASM's general meeting program committee points out, microbiologists are only in a position to deal with such threats because many of them toil for long years at the bench with no obvious practical application in mind. Governments, he argues, must recognize the value of such research and continue to fund it.

Take Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the latest emerging infectious disease to hit the headlines. The pathogen that causes SARS is a member of the previously little-known coronavirus family. If there hadn't already been a community of researchers in place who had closely studied that family for years, says Fang, there would have existed none of the knowledge that has subsequently been mobilized in the war against SARS.

One by-product of that vast body of research is that microbiologists are now able to speculate that SARS may have jumped the species barrier from cats to humans. Because three out of four new human diseases have their origins in animals, they suggest that more SARS-like epidemics are inevitable.

West Nile Virus is another disease to have emerged recently in the developed world. Although cases have been reported in which the virus was contracted through blood transfusion or organ transplant, it is primarily a mosquito-borne disease and, as such, a product - some would argue - of ever-shifting human population dynamics and a streak of complacency when it comes to mosquito control.

The food chain is also more vulnerable than ever before. Elsa Murano, the first microbiologist to hold the post of US Under Secretary for Food Safety, points out that emerging pathogens, new food-processing technologies, ever-expanding international trade and the threat of bioterrorism all mean that greater and permanent vigilance is required when it comes to food safety.

Others, like Steve Projan, director of antibacterial research at Wyeth Research in Pearl River, New York, are quick to stress that some of the new diseases, though briefly devastating, are dwarfed by the far greater and perennial threat of antibiotic resistant infections. He says we need to look first at our basic hygiene and sanitation if we are going to stem the growing tide of antibiotic resistance.

But since the problem is already with us, many researchers are working hard to overcome it - specifically, by coming up with alternative therapies. Phage lytic enzymes are one new promising line of attack that exploits nature's own way of killing bacteria. They appear to be able to treat even vancomycin-resistant bacteria, and animal trials suggest that neither immunity nor resistance will be a problem for these new drugs.

They do have one drawback, though. Each enzyme is only effective against one species of bacterium. Yet in the current situation, most doctors are not equipped, or do not have the luxury of time, to be able to determine whether a patient's infection is bacterial or viral. Many speakers at the conference stressed the need for faster and more accurate diagnostic techniques - in particular, for immunocompromised patients who are vulnerable to opportunistic infections.

Others are trying to understand at a basic level how resistance develops in the first place. Jo Handelsman studies the dynamics of microbial communities living in soil, and analyses the genomes of the bacteria she is unable to culture to understand how they generate antibiotic resistance. She then uses what she learns to develop novel antibiotics.

And why stop at Earthly microbes? The US space agency NASA is funding research to find out whether microbes from Mars, should they exist, could survive the journey to Earth on board an ejected lump of Martian rock - not to mention a collision with an icy corner of Antarctica. The answer, based on high velocity ballistic simulations, appears to be yes.

So the delegates to the annual ASM meeting refused to narrow their horizons to the issue of homeland security. Nevertheless, they recognize that bioterrorism looms large in the public imagination. The NIH now intends to invest a larger proportion of its funds in bioterrorism research.

And Julie Gerberding, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), took the opportunity to spell out how her organization has learnt the hard way the benefits of being open with the public about the possible threats - even when the answer is, "we don't know".

Ron Atlas, outgoing president of the ASM, emphasized the need for the existing laboratory response network - the frontline when it comes to the US's defence against emerging pathogens - to embrace state-of-the-art forensic technology, to keep track of every detail of every clinical case, and to maintain watertight security at all times.

He also discussed the ASM's strategy to the publication of scientific research with national security implications - for instance, research on pathogens that might be considered potential biological weapons. He talked about balancing the traditional openness of publication with national security concerns and, perhaps most importantly in the current climate of fear, of leaving the final decision on publication to the discretion of individual editors.