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🎉 New in @plosbiology.org: Temperate phages of Klebsiella pneumoniae show capsule-driven host tropism — but how? The working assumption was depolymerases: enzymes that chew through the bacterial sugar capsule. Turns out that's not the whole story. 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

The CDC will not publish a study showing that Covid vaccines reduce the risk of hospitalization, despite passing scientific review, and despite using the same methods in studies published in its own journal, and in other journals. Story by @lenasun.bsky.social wapo.st/4cLQkDH

Please share! My lab has an open fully-funded PhD position at Vilnius University's Life Sciences Center in Lithuania. The PhD project will involve identifying missing orthomyxovirus segments from public sequence data. Applicants must hold an MSc by June & have bioinformatics experience. 1/2

Happy to share EVBC Newsletter No. 102 (April 2026), including: 📢 Updates on ViBioM 2026 📜 Newest EVBC member publications + tools 📅 Upcoming events + deadlines 💼 Open vacancies 🎤 Webinar announcements 🔗 https://evbc.uni-jena.de/evbc-newsletter/ #bioinformatics #virology

In collaboration with Nicola Muller, and led by @lambod50.bsky.social, we have a new preprint out that's all about reassortment! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Using TargetedBeast, we built massive (9000 tips!) Bayesian phylogenies of North American H5Nx viruses, and inferred the host...

Excited to advertise a fully funded PhD with @socialinfluenza.bsky.social investigating how influenza virus evolution differs between different avian hosts (and how this impacts pandemic potential). Joint between @pirbrightinst.bsky.social + @cvrinfo.bsky.social www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Out now at PLoS Pathogens @plos.org. Nice collaboration with @danielhurdiss.bsky.social @utrechtvirology.bsky.social. Some beautiful glycoproteomics work by @tshamorkina.bsky.social mapping N- and O-glycan shield of coronaviruses infecting whales and dolphins 🐋🐬🐳. journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

In March, Matt Ridley gave the inaugural "Scientific Freedom Lecture" at NIH, on a lab leak origin of COVID-19. The talk was so full of misrepresentations, omissions, falsehoods and lies that I will need several blog posts to debunk it. Here's Part I: pandemonium.hypotheses.org/995 🧪 #covidorigin

Really excited to be able to share our latest preprint, describing how during its evolution in cattle, H5N1 has got better at using a type of alternative receptor that's abundant in cows, but not found in humans and birds. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📣Huge preprint 🔔 Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.

So pleased to contribute to this preprint on H5N1 spillover from birds to dairy cattle from the Moo Flu Crew, led by the excellent @jevp.bsky.social. We traced both B3.13 in Texas and D1.1 in Nevada and Arizona to look at how the virus evolves and what changed👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We did a plasma proteomics study on dengue disease severity in children with Tineke Cantaert and identified early markers of endothelial and inflammatory activation. Great work by @tshamorkina.bsky.social and Sofia! Thanks to all co-authors @hecklab.bsky.social. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is so cool: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Discovery of a Genetic Toxin-Antidote System in Vertebrates hat tip to @asaflevylab.bsky.social

Not all bat viruses spread the same way 🦇 A new study from @averyholmes.bsky.social & colleagues looked at six viruses in vampire bats in Peru & found contrasting patterns of circulation. Some reflect bat movement, others were influenced by human activity. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📢 Registration for ViBioM 2026 is now open! Join us in Vilnius this May for ViBioM 2026 and connect with researchers working at the intersection of virology and bioinformatics. 🗓️ Registration deadline: 30 April 🔗 evbc.uni-jena.de/events/vibio... #ViBioM2026 #virology #bioinformatics

⏰Abstract submission for #ViBioM2026 is open until midnight tonight (00:00 CET) - Don't miss your chance to present a talk at the International Virus Bioinformatics Meeting! 🎤🦠🧬💻 👉 evbc.uni-jena.de/events/vibio... #virology #bioinformatics

I love delicious figures! These show changes in the relationship between symptom onset and viral load over time among SARS-CoV-2 variants (Fig.3) and the impact of vaccination on peak (lower) and length (shorter) of infectious virus or viral genetic material produced over time (Fig.4)

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

The last part abt how measles disrupts immunity vs other infections is, imo, underappreciated (& mechanism was recently clarified). It's part of why measles vaccination was seen to help beyond just reducing measles complications - not getting measles reduces severity of subsequent infections too.

1/6) Hot off the press @natsmb.nature.com 🔥! Jasnauskaite et al. reveal how the minimal bacterial retron Eco2 defends against #phage 🛡️. Phage nucleases trigger Eco2, which cuts RNA, shuts down protein production and stops phage replication 🦠🚫. #phagesky #immunity #microbiology #cryo-em rdcu.be/e4AyH

Now that @mftorresj.bsky.social & I are based at VU Life Sciences Center (one of the birthplaces of CRISPR tech) our publication portfolio gets extra diverse thanks to our phylogenetics & data vis skills. Here's one collaboration with @patrick-pausch.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Something very different and cool for my lab. Sequencing a 4.4mb TB genome using the Artic-style PCR amplicon method with >5128 primers in two reactions 🤯 Enables culture-free WGS for TB! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

SFI’s Santiago Elena has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He joins 62 fellows in the 2026 class. His work explores how RNA viruses adapt to hosts and manipulate cellular resources. Since joining SFI in 2008, he has organized several working groups on virus evolution.

The return of measles will mean the return of SSPE. If you don't know what that is, read this. www.voicesforvaccines.org/what-measles...

How did life arise from simple chemical building blocks? New #LMBResearch led by @edogia.bsky.social in @philholliger.bsky.social group has identified a small self-replicating ribozyme that could be the answer. Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/...

Have I ever mentioned how surreal it is to be an Editor-in-Chief of a journal called Vaccine right now? www.science.org/content/arti... It’s pretty wild, at least by typical academic journal editorial office standards.

Take time to focus on your interpersonal skills, discover tools to support your development and tune up your interpersonal and communication skills at the @embo.org Lab Leadership course for #Postdocs: 10 - 12 March 2026. Places still available: www.embolableadership.org/course/embol... #EMBOLabLead

The University of Helsinki is strengthening its research in environmental policy, international law, sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, and zoonotic virology through new international recruitments. www.helsinki.fi/en/news/univ...

📢Join us for the next ECR #Viromics Webinar "How viral evolution is shaped during long-term infections of immune-compromised hosts" ‍🎙️Jonas Fuchs, University Hospital Freiburg, Germany 🗓️11 Feb 2026, 4 PM CET 📍Online/Zoom (register for login details) 👉 evbc.uni-jena.de/events/ecr-v...

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

Really excited our paper about how H5N1 rapidly adapted to cattle (and how these adaptations also increased its ability to infect cells from the human respiratory tract) is now published! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper on the Genomic Epidemiology of DENV2/3 in Colombia and the Americas is finally out @cp-cellreports.bsky.social, check it out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Big thanks to my collaborators @lambod50.bsky.social, @viralverity.bsky.social, @nathangrubaugh.bsky.social, and many others!

Global solidarity in genomic surveillance improves early detection of acute respiratory virus threats. "Importantly, these benefits cannot be attained by siloed expansion in countries that already possess strong capacity." Well done to the team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Terrific origin story, history, and future of bioRxiv and medRxiv by @richardsever.bsky.social in @mbio.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

✨Africa CDC shuts down RFK's attempt to conduct a Tuskegee-like vaccine trial on children in Guinea-Bissau. The study exploited “the scarcity of a proven beneficial vaccine in a context where that vaccine is needed,” said Boghuma Titanji. @melodyschreiber.com www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Remember? RNA virus journal club is already this Thursday! 🤩 Join us and join our (RdRp summit) slack (link in the comment): calendar.app.google/K2fwcsL78K1E... RNA Virus Journal ClubJoin Zoom Meeting us02web.zoom.us/j/8109697228... Meeting ID: 810 9697 2281 Passcode: 174610

Come join my group as a postdoc on a fun wildepi.ca project looking at the evolution of endemic alpha- and betacoronaviruses in Canadian wildlife. Computational work will inform concurrent experimental work in the @banerjeelab.ca and @smubareka.bsky.social groups! bioinformatics.ca/jobs/postdoc...

Very much looking forward to my fireside chat with @syramadad.bsky.social next Thursday at 1pm PST at the Belfer Center @harvardkennedy.bsky.social on "Genomic Surveillance & Pathogen Data Sharing: A New Era for Scientific Diplomacy". Virtual, so come join us! harvard.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Check out our new print that combines dense sequencing and phylodynamics to uncover a bunch of 😎 things about an understudied virus. - Doesn't evolve for 10 months a year ✅ - Uses some mossies for maintenance, others for spread ✅ - Established in Northeast for ~300 years ✅

🦟📄 New preprint! Our first large-scale phylodynamic study of Jamestown Canyon virus (JCV) reveals how mosquito ecology shapes the evolution, persistence, and spread of this understudied arbovirus in North America. Read it here! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am very glad to share the preprint for our latest study on the 2024-2025 chikungunya virus outbreak on Réunion island, with primary data produced thanks to the massive efforts performed by Marie-C Jaffar and Etienne Frumence and analyses led by Simon Dellicour. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

'But what if IAVs could use a different receptor? Our previous work revealed that the IAV subtypes H17N10 and H18N11, which have so far been detected exclusively in bats, use MHC-II molecules as entry receptors instead of the conventional sialic acid receptors'

We've a computational PhD project available AI-DRIVEN DISCOVERY OF VIRUS–HOST MOLECULAR INTERACTIONS www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvl... as part of the University of Glasgow's MVLS Futures Themes PhD Programme. Deadline for applications is this Monday, 12th Jan 2026. Please apply!

I wrote about this claim forever ago when he made it on Joe Rogan's show:

This isn't in international media yet but Lithuania is in crisis. The ruling coalition is trying to seize control of our public broadcaster LRT using expedited parliamentary procedures. European & Venice Commissions are aware & we've been protesting for the last two weeks. Things are looking grim.

I rarely ask for things, but I will make an exception for my colleague and friend, Augustine Goba, who dedicated his life to saving others. Augustine was Director of the hemorrhagic fever lab in Kenema, Salone, and is struggling with PSP. Please consider donating. www.gofundme.com/f/augustine-...

François Blanquart et al. dive into the genetic basis of HIV virulence with very cool statistical methods. They show that viral load is shaped by host-dependent HLA escape variants with large effects, alongside many additional variants whose effects are too subtle to reach genome-wide significance.

Excellent news:

Amazing example of influenza cheat/cooperator cycles in this recent paper - the repeatability of the oscillatory cycles is so striking Congrats to @alnajifg.bsky.social , @christopherbrooke.bsky.social , @vignuzzilab.bsky.social & friends www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧪 #socialviruses