Farewell, Zahra! Celebrating the end of a successful PhD journey with some well-deserved fun.

Super happy to announce Zahra Alfaheeda has passed her PhD viva. 🥳 She worked hard to combine diverse resources from cancer biology, virology and vector biology for a really unique project. Looking forward to sharing her story soon. Thanks to @maringerlab.bsky.social and Gina Doody for examining.

See you Thursday 18th for our first seminar of the series with the inspiring @priyashah.bsky.social from @ucdavis.bsky.social with her talk “Harder, better, faster, stronger: integrating virology and engineering to drive discovery”. All welcome! email us for the zoom link.

Psyched to be co-chairing this great line up of diverse speakers who represent the best in arbovirus research. See you there! Send us your email for a Zoom login. Please help with a re-post :-)

Not just wild fires that follow hot weather, clusters of locally acquired mosquito-borne virus infection in south France, an update on numbers.

Was sad to say farewell to @yoncakeskekturk.bsky.social today. She transformed our understanding of the sandfly-skin interface during virus infection for her PhD, and just finished testing a new Zikv vaccine. She returns home to 🤞start her career as lecturer/PI. Take care Yonca! You will be missed.

We knew this deeply misguided man was bad news, but now his actions threaten us all. RNA-based vaccines are safe, effective at preventing disease, and can be rapidly manufactured at scale. Just as the threat of infectious disease increases, we remove our best defence. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I thought it might be helpful to do a more general immunology explainer which I can then build on for example when I discuss specific papers or political actions. Do let me know if its useful and other topics if so. This first one is a general one about how we tackle infections... 🧪 #ImmunoSky

How can mosquitoes tolerate viral infections? In our latest preprint we show that mosquitoes that can regulate their metabolism after infection can tolerate viral infections better. Thanks to all the authors for all your ideas and contributions www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵 Dengue is no longer just a tropical disease - it's showing up in Europe. This season, France, Italy, and Portugal (Madeira) have already reported locally acquired dengue cases. Check the latest #CDTR on #dengue here: bit.ly/3TQpDVu #IdSky #EpiSky #MosquitoBorne #Prevention #PublicHealth

🦟"World Health Organization @who.int raises concern about spread of #mosquito-borne #chikungunya #virus" via @reuters.com #arbovirus #GLAI www.reuters.com/business/hea...

Despite all the shit going on, we have to celebrate our victories. New publication with @entomososwin.bsky.social and @vectorimmunity.bsky.social showing that hemocytes play a central role in disseminating flaviviruses to secondary tissues potentially functioning as a Trojan Horse(TBD) rdcu.be/euj4g

These images are just stunning, generated using the largest mirror paired with the largest digital camera ever made. @vrubinobs.bsky.social

Nature research paper: Kupffer cell programming by maternal obesity triggers fatty liver disease https://go.nature.com/4laOA9s

Last seminar in the series with latest insights from Jonathan Abraham's team - #alphavirus-fest 🤓

A great talk at GRC on tick-borne #CCHFV #pathogenesis. GP38, a secreted viral protein, drives vascular leak by disrupting the endothelial glycocalyx, similar to DENV NS1. Antibodies blocked leak and protected mice; => GP38 can be considered a viral Toxin; www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

@chatel-chaixlab.bsky.social just gave excellent summary of their paper on a new #zebrafish model #ZIKV at GRC viruses and cells. Useful new tool for assessing #neuropathogenesis when paired with unprecedented genetic and imaging capabilities. Worth checking out. journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Looking forward to a day of Yorkshire Immmnology at @york.ac.uk with my former colleague Gerry Graham of @crgglasgow.bsky.social as keynote. If you’re coming do say hi! 👋 #BSIYorkshire25

Super psyched to have leading investigator @thehornerlab.bsky.social presenting her team's work THURSDAY 15th May on Zoom. #flavivirus #virus-host-interactions #innate_immunity #DENV #ZIKV All are very welcome and please re-post to get the word out. Email organisers for Zoom link. See you there!

The free speech website where the owner (who believes in free speech) will throttle your access if you criticize him - even if you support all the far-right conspiracy theories and bigotry he supports. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This rather sad decision seems to miss the point that our understanding of the biological underpinning of gender is not complete. Binary concepts inferred from the inheritance of whole chromosomes is outdated and not helpful. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

It's finally time for some #bunyavirales and #tick borne viruses with Ben Brennan from @cvrinfo.bsky.social and his much anticipated talk, this THURSDAY 17th. All welcome! Please help us with a re-post. 🕷️🦠🧫

So proud of this diverse, international team, excelling at presenting the results of their hard work, all of who gave superb talks at #microbio25 🥲👏🏼

Please go check out poster 311 during the poster session to hear all about the inspiring project that is Flow.Walk.Drag 💧👣👩‍🎤 So cool to have this at @microbiologysociety.org this year 🤩 #MicroBio25 #QueerInSTEM #QueerinMicro 🏳️‍🌈🦠🧫

This isn't just bad policy, it's a green light for pseudoscience to dictate public health, divert research funding, and strip away federal oversight. The very outcomes we are seeing, right now. This is the undoing of decades of public health progress, and all of us are in harm's way. 13/

Insanity

3 great talks from my team at #microbio25 ; Liam on pro-viral mosquito saliva 31/3 15:30 hall 3b; Amani on how vitD can protect skin from virus 1/4 16:39 hall 4; and Yonca shows how sand fly bites reprograms skin cells to better replicate virus 2/4 15:09 hall 1b. 🥹 #arbovirus #climate_change #skin

The burden of viral disease in many African countries is underreported. Here, using the latest #sequencing approaches, this much needed study has identified the viral aetiology in patients with #fever. Numerous (re) emerging #arboviruses of concern found; #CCHFV #YFV #RVFV #DENV

THREAD The numbers are in. @bsky.app research sharing volumes vs X Formerly Twitter In March 2024, on most days, Bluesky hosts more posts linked to research published in 2025 than X. By quite a lot. Release the Kraken... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics 1/11

Our final PhD position is now live - come help us see if AI approaches can aid our understanding of cellular signalling systems during infection and cancer. Maybe this could help develop new clinical interventions? www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

When your ideology denies climate change’s impact on public health, cutting research funding is the predictable next step. A devastating blow to a critical field—and to the people who rely on its findings www.propublica.org/article/nih-...

Some nice new reserach from @mariekedoesscience.bsky.social and @crgglasgow.bsky.social studying the inflammatory CCR locus and immune responses to influenza. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Also with a great session on how climate change is increasing risks of viral emergence, and how research is helping to predict and mitigate these new infectious risks to human/animal health (Monday 31st). Still time to register!

Why can't these viruses be friends? In a new study from her PhD @cvrinfo.bsky.social, #AnnaSims shows that #SARS-CoV-2 infections segregate into distinct microdomains as they spread. But why? (1/N) journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

#Chikungunya epidemic on Reunion island. ~3000 confirmed cases and 2 deaths during week 10 (3-9 Mar.) #Aedes aegypti

Loving this animation of mitochondria respiratory chain.

Hi everyone, what's up? We have our monthly seminar this week, with some super cool work on arbovirus entry receptors from leading researcher Jolanda Smit from @unigroningen.bsky.social All welcome - help spread the news with a re-post 🙂 NOTE THE EARLIER TIME for everyone outside the USA

Fascinating insights from @groomlab.bsky.social team on IFNs, T cell positioning in LN and how this affects CD8 T cell fate. All sorts of 🤩 implications. See this great thread that explains it better than me!

I am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research. Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵 biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

🦠🔬 We are very excited to organize an EMBO workshop on Immunity in Barrier Tissues with Carolyn King! @immunologyking.bsky.social 📍 Where: Basel, Switzerland 📅 When: 26th–29th August 2025 📝 Registration deadline: 30th May 2025 Check out the program and details 🔗 #EMBOBarrierTissues @embo.org

Haven't seen semlor being discussed outside of Sweden before 🤩 . One reason to visit before Easter brings their demise for another year. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

Excited to announce our next speaker Dr William de Souza who will be presenting work on virus transmission dynamics of #emerging #arboviruses NEXT THURSDAY. Will be great to get some perspective from an up-and-coming investigator. PLEASE help with a repost for this community driven seminar series.

There is a Postdoc job available in my lab to study fundamental mechanisms of antiviral immunity, specifically in the context of viral nucleic acid sensing. Please take a look here and contact me if interested: #immunosky #virology 🧪 www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/50254/

A thoughtful piece about how LGBTQIA+ individuals have been excluded from clinical research and why this matters. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We expected it to be bad, but so quickly?

Quite the difference between DeepSeek and the other AI chatbots, but not that surprising. youtu.be/o6YhG-87wfc

It’s a hard choice but this one must the worst of all his executive orders? Probably tied with Paris climate agreement withdrawal. Both are linked. A warming world brings new health challenges that must be coordinated at a global level.

Is anyone going to buy a car from this guy 🤔

See you later today, Thursday 16th, for this virtual seminar from leading investigator Luke Alphey. 👇 All welcome!

‘Pathogens and planetary change’. Some really cool insights discussed here, with arbovirus/mosquito exemplars discussed.