Identification of hot spring Obelisk-like RNA replicons and expanded diversity of the Obelisk superfamily | Nature Communications https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-71096-6

New transcription signals in SARS-CoV-2 reshape virus–host interactions journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Argentina reports hundreds of new chikungunya cases open.substack.com/pub/outbreak...

I have the pleasure of giving a talk at this year's SFV meeting.

What shapes the human DNA virome? Analysis of blood & saliva shows persistent viruses (EBV, HHV-6B, HHV-7, anelloviruses), with viral load varying by age, higher in men, and influenced by host genetics (MHC, ERAP1, ERAP2).

The official taxonomy of viruses have just been updated ictv.global/news/MSL41 Updated data in: ICTV 2025 master species list (MSL41) ictv.global/msl Virus Metadata Resource 2025 (MSL41) ictv.global/vmr

🎉 Registration for ECCB 2026 is now open! Join the computational biology community in Geneva for 5 days of science & collaboration. Organized by the @sib.swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. ⏰ Early bird until 31 March 📆 31 Aug - 4 Sep 2026 👉 eccb2026.org/registration... #eccb2026 #GenevaLovesData

Preprint: Identification and structural characterisation of a picornavirus integrin receptor with an essential role of two distinct glycans for virus infection www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9...

AlphaFold database has entered the era of complexes. Together with NVIDIA, DeepMind and EBI, we use ColabFold, OpenFold and MMseqs2-GPU to predict ~31 million complexes (homo & hetro-dimers) resulting in 1.8 million high-quality predictions 📄 research.nvidia.com/labs/dbr/ass... 🌐 alphafold.ebi.ac.uk

@ecallaway.bsky.social wrote a news article on our AlphaFold complex work. Thank you for covering it. 📄 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Nature research paper: Structures of Marburgvirus glycoprotein and its complex with NPC1 receptor go.nature.com/4urU3yb

Scientists say they have made some of the first direct measurements of how long it takes an individual, ordinary protein to fold – and the results were surprising. go.nature.com/3N4UrSD

Influenza A(H3N2) subclade K (J.2.4.1) dominated this winter (>80% of infections in the Northern Hemisphere). Baseline antibody titers to subclade K variants were lower than to other H1N1/H3N2 strains—and vaccine-induced responses were also significantly weaker. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration! Linking below previous thread on our findings

⏰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

Co-transcriptional cap snatching by influenza virus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase helps make viral mRNAs stable and competent for nuclear export and translation @nature.com @maxplanck.de www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A real nice work on influenza replication complex : Coupling of polymerase-nucleoprotein-RNA in an influenza virus mini ribonucleoprotein complex | Nature Communications https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64741-z

Exploring ICTV virus metadata just got easier on ViralZone — interactive table, instant CSV export, and full search. The new species names are displayed alongside virus names and acronyms. viralzone.expasy.org/resources/VM... (source: ictv.global/vmr)

The ViralZone alphavirus virion just got an update based on the latest chikungunya virus data. Check out the fascinating pattern of the capsid linked to the membrane proteins. viralzone.expasy.org/625

It is almost five years since I first applied AlphaFold to a handful of viral proteins. Today, hundreds of thousands of predictions and many discoveries later, we are delighted to announce the integration of our Viro3D dataset into the @ebi.embl.org and Google DeepMind AlphaFold Database.

That is some cool shit, right there! Detailed structure of a herpesvirus tail!! Lineal descendants of bacterial viruses and their structures are among us....😁 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The NIAID is expected to deprioritize biodefense and pandemic preparedness in an overhaul of its funded research projects go.nature.com/4kBhiRT

Here we go: a method to predict symmetric protein complexes—exactly what’s needed to reconstruct full viral capsids from AlphaFold models.

Rabies an increasing threat in Ukraine - The Lancet Infectious Diseases www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Nipah virus is a long-known zoonosis, spilling over from fruit bats and capable of human-to-human spread. Small outbreaks occur almost every year, especially in Kerala, India. In the recent West Bengal outbreak, the unknown source of infection has led to heightened precautions.

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social. 📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason 💾 github.com/steineggerla...

Rift Valley Fever continues to spread among humans, livestock, & wildlife throughout west Africa. Learn more about the wide-ranging impacts of this disease at an upcoming webinar on Jan 20 hosted by @buceid.bsky.social & @onehealthinstitute.bsky.social VISTA program. bostonu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Nucleus softens during herpesvirus infection journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

The infection enigma: why some people die from typically harmless germs www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com @dianakwon.bsky.social

Zoom seminar: Drawing on recent mechanistic and genetic studies, Prof Andres Merits' talk will highlight how #alphavirus #replication complex function intersects with innate #immune sensing and restriction, offering fresh perspectives on virus–host co-evolution and antiviral targeting. All welcome!

New "PanMAN" tool for pangenomics compresses millions of genomes into a tiny fraction of storage space: 8 million SARS-CoV-2 sequences in 366MB! Builds on pathogen tracking tools pioneered @ucsantacruz.bsky.social. Will improve public health response & vaccine development. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

From inert nutshell to transcriptional factory: a remarkable discovery showing how a simple viral capsid springs to life upon access to NTPs in the infected cell.

Very interesting paper from the beautiful city of York, which provides a mechanistic explanation for the epidemiological link between BK polyomavirus infection/replication in kidney transplant recipients, and subsequent urothelial carcinoma. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41337590/

📢Join us for the next ECR #Viromics Webinar "Ocean physics, phytoplankton-virus interactions and the carbon cycle: implications for aggregation and export" ‍🎙️Dr. Kay Bidle, Rutgers University, USA 🗓️14 Jan 2026, 4 PM CET 📍Online/Zoom (register for login details) 👉 evbc.uni-jena.de/events/ecr-v...

#RNAi is an ancestral #antiviral system that degrades viral RNA, but what about in #cnidarians? @yehumoran.bsky.social &co show that #Nematostella has an siRNA-mediated antiviral response that lacks 2ary amplification & functions as a short-term antiviral mechanism @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3N192OD

The fundamental problem with GISAID is this - data on the platform are neither open, nor FAIR. Such data - key for combating infectious diseases - are, by a large margin, paid for by taxpayers and hence must be openly available to all. With GISAID, they are not. www.science.org/content/arti...

Deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Amos Bairoch. He introduced me to bioinformatics 22 years ago and helped shape our field with resources like Swiss-Prot, Cellosaurus, and ViralZone. I’ve lost a friend, and the community has lost a visionary.

Interesting! I have been teaching the multiple origins of viruses since 1983, I will point out...😁 www.the-scientist.com/where-do-vir...

H5N1 in bats - what should we think about this? @itingtu.bsky.social explains her recent preprint (a collaboration with multiple @cvrinfo.bsky.social groups) in a really nice interview with @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

What role will structural modeling play in the future of phylogenetics? Find out at the Australasian Protein Structural Phylogenetics Meeting (APSPM).

In addition to nearly 200,000 experimentally-determined PDB structures, RCSB.org now offers access to ~1 million Computed Structure Models (CSMs) from AlphaFoldDB and RoseTTAFold (from Model Archive)

ViralZone’s RSV circulating variants page now features updated resistance mutations and domain annotations for the F (Fusion) protein. viralzone.expasy.org/11605

Flaviviruses are highly diverse, and their taxonomy is evolving into three families—Flaviviridae, Pestiviridae, and Hepaciviridae—with new genera added. Cherry on top: structural modeling with FoldTree and Foldseek helped refine the classification. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Epstein-Barr virus may drive autoimmunity in lupus by infecting and reprogramming memory B cells, according to a new #ScienceTranslationalMedicine analysis of patient-derived blood samples. https://scim.ag/49orb21

👉 Make sure to register for this webinar on 27 November, in which Emma Hodcroft will present “PathoPlexus: A Community-Driven Solution for Transparent and Equitable Viral Genomic Data Sharing”.

Viro3D delivers >85,000 AI-predicted protein structures for >4,400 viruses, expanding viral structural coverage 30-fold, enabling new insights to virus function/evolution. #VirusBioinformatics #StructuralBiology🧬🔍 📄 doi.org/10.1038/s443... 👤EVBC members: Spyros Lytras, David Robertson, Joseph Hughes

Upcoming seminar: 🎓Prof Andreas Pichlmair, @dzif.bsky.social 📢"Virus‐host interactomics identify pathogen restriction factors and highlight the importance of non-canonical regulatory processes for antiviral immunity" 📅 4:30-5:30PM, Thur 20 November 📍JCBC @cambridgebiocampus.bsky.social #CITIID

Metagenomic sequencing in neuroinflammatory disorders uncovers rare viral pathogens and improves diagnostic accuracy, highlighting the value of unbiased viral surveillance in clinical neurology. #VirusDiagnostics #Metagenomics 🧠🧬 📄 doi.org/10.1016/j.di... 👤 EVBC member: Michael Huber

The outbreak in Ethiopia is #Marburg virus, the first such outbreak for this country. 9 cases so far, including some health workers. x.com/drtedros/sta...

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Check out this new GEM!!! @asm.org #JVI