Can safely way this is the craziest and coolest study I have led. We chart the evolution of sheeppox virus, finding it in the Eurasian steppe ~3700 years ago, and also in a LOT of parchment from medieval Europe (made from a range of animals skins!) #aDNA

Excited to be hosting Dr Nicola Fletcher (UCD) today at our QUB School of Biological Sciences to discuss one health virology

Measles cases are resurging globally, but genomic surveillance at the global scale is sparse. In our new preprint, we show wastewater can provide population-level and low-cost data on virus spread and evolution. See @kgandersen.bsky.social's post for a high level summary, more detail here though!🧵

Measles, mumps, and chickenpox are 3 viruses that can cause encephalitis, an uncommon but serious swelling of the brain. The MMRV vaccine protects you against all-3 of these viruses, as well as rubella. 🔴🧠 #Red4WED #WorldEncephalitisDay

Two great 4y positions up for grabs with us and Ross working on his BBSRC MosquitoNI project, with collaborators in GB. Deadlines in a week (research fellow) and 2 weeks (RA). Lots of vector ecology and modelling but also looking at what viruses can we find in our 🦟!

New modelling suggests chikungunya transmission in Europe may be possible at lower temperatures than previously thought—expanding the seasonal and geographic risk as the Asian tiger mosquito spreads north with warming climate. : royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Why does the common cold knock some of us down while others barely sniffle? Excited to share our new paper published in @cellpressblue.bsky.social revealing how nasal epithelial cells coordinate to defend against Rhinovirus. Read here: www.cell.com/cell-press-b... #Virology #ScienceSky

Get ready for the 4th IMAV meeting!

I’m excited to recruit a postdoc to join my lab at NIAID (Rocky Mountain Labs). We study mucosal immunity and vaccine responses to respiratory viruses in a collaborative, supportive environment. Details & apply: www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdf-miv... #Postdoc #Immunology #Virology #NIHJobs

Major problem with this review is that there is no such thing as “human parainfluenza virus” onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A dairy cow in the Netherlands appears to have been infected with H5N1, the first report of this deadly avian influenza virus having spread to cattle outside of the United States 🧪🦠 www.science.org/content/arti...

🦟 New project | Mosquitoes, their viruses and associated disease risk in NI MosquitoNI will be co-led by a multi-institutional team including @UofGlasgow's CVR (@emipondeville), @QUBelfast & @UK_CEH. www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/...

Great to have our ‘MosquitoNI’ project funded by a BBSRC New Investigator Award This £1.5M project will unravel how mosquitoes, their viruses, and associated pathogens respond to environmental changes. It also addresses knowledge needs in a data-poor temperate region www.qub.ac.uk/schools/Scho...

One Week left to apply for this exciting PhD via the QUARTILES DLA w/ @micecoevo.bsky.social , @timskvortsov.bsky.social & Julianne Megaw) on understanding drivers of virus ecology in the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles, Lough Neagh! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Happy Little Christmas! While Nollaig na mBan is a relatively new* thing, the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, was known as Notlaic Becc ‘Little Christmas’ or Notlaic Stéille, ‘Christmas of the star’, in early Irish texts. It seems to have marked the end of the season, & 'back to work' time! 1/

Happy Winter Solstice - and Happy #NationalRobinDay! What better bird to cheer up the shortest day? Reply with your favourite snaps of these beloved garden friends... Let's fill our feeds with Robins. 😍

2000 yr old rotavirus!

Sometimes, viruses don't have to be the bad guys... Sometimes we can use one to treat another! Chuffed to present excellent work from Dr Samantha Garcia-Cardenas showing how the innate immune system can be "rewired" by a benign Reovirus to eliminate SARS2 infection. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Amazing novel mpox recombination between epidemic clade 1 and 2 in returning traveller detected in UK: virological.org/t/inter-clad...

A big thank you to Kevin Daly @gingerhowley.bsky.social who came to us last week and presented his lab’s exciting work on using aDNA to study livestock domestication and pathogen ecology!

Using PDB structures, researchers designed treatments for HIV infection, which are now part of effective drug regimens that halt the growth of the virus. Learn more at PDB-101 pdb101.rcsb.org/brow... #WorldAIDSDay

Our umpteenth cold or the season this week but oddly the cat has also started sneezing! 🤔

How does fever work? Our new Science paper shows how elevated body temperature can protect against severe influenza and that avian-origin viruses escape this defence. This is likely one reason why bird flus and some pandemic influenzas can be so severe.🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A side note on this little festive project - it was genuinely lovely when writing it to be reminded that (as of January with the introduction of MMRV) the UK will offer all children vaccines to protect them from 9 serious viral diseases (plus another 12 bacterial diseases). Vaccines are amazing

If you'd like to celebrate the biology of viruses - or the fight against viral diseases - this winter, try out our free and updated #VirusSnowflake designs. Please share, and if you have any photos of Virus Snowflakes in your area it would be lovely to see them! cvr-engagement.co.uk/virus-snowfl...

Wastewater surveillance of hepatitis A in New York State. Our team's latest work here. #EpiSky 🧪💩#WBE www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The suspected outbreak of a hemorrhagic vial illness in Ethiopia has now been confirmed to Marburg Virus Disease. So far 9 cases have been identified in a part of the country that shares a border with Sudan. apnews.com/article/ethi...

A rather somber first paper out of the project

Wild-type polio detected in German sewage—this is *actual* polio, not vaccine-derived virus. This will probably be a one-off event, but it shows the real potential for polio reintroduction into under-vaccinated communities.

🚨New preprint🚨 In a multidisciplinary tour-de-force, @itingtu.bsky.social shows that, because #H5N1 flu is now routinely infecting seals and sealions in Peru, it's also spilling over into the vampire bats that feed from beaches... 🦭🦠🦇 (1/2)

felt good (and bad) submitting 6(!) abstracts for my group for the Microbiology Society conference annual meeting in Belfast next year, with only 30 minutes to spare... a new record

I'll be presenting at @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social at the School of Biological Sciences, 2nd December, 1pm - please come along to hear about #aDNA, domestication, and disease!

#Breaking: Canada has formally lost its measles elimination status, the country’s public health agency announced, triggering the loss of that status throughout all of the Americas. www.statnews.com/2025/11/10/m...

BBC News - Experts say this could be the worst flu season for a decade - here's why www.bbc.com/news/article...

Up a bit earlier than I’d like… but excited for me and my lab to present at the Irish Microbiology Society meeting in beautiful - and slightly isolated - Athlone!

🔊 Applications for the tenure-track illuminate global challenge fellowships at Queen’s are now open! Comes with 5 years protected research time, a PhD studentship, & 60k start-up. I had one of these before getting my FLF, happy to chat to anyone interested! www.qub.ac.uk/Research/fel...

A divergent betacoronavirus with a functional furin cleavage site in South American bats https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684489v1

The Microbiology Society returns to Belfast in April. From microbiomes to natural products, phage to protists, infection models to plant pathogens, together with all the usual fora, and ECM development opportunities. There truly is something for everyone! Get your abstracts in now and join us! 🦠

I'm v excited to be recruiting a PhD student to work on badger behaviour and ecology! Starting date is March 2026; see the ad here, or message me for more details: www.gregalbery.me/s/March-2026...

excellent article on Ancient RNA research www.science.org/content/arti...

Serological evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in red and fallow deer in Great Britain. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.17.682775v1

Our first effort exploring gut bacteria-extracellular ATP interactions is published! We show that eATP rewires gene expression and physiology in harmless and pathogenic bacteria, impacting production of bioactive metabolites, antimicrobial sensitivity, and virulence. A 🧵 www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Is a healthy microbiome one that is rich in phages? 🦠 Excited to share our paper out in Lancet Microbe with @bkoskella.bsky.social & @dholtappels.bsky.social where we test whether virome diversity can be used a broad signature of microbiome health 📈

🧵🚨 The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news. Today our report is published! www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n... 1/11

#UKHSAVirusWatch is back, a summary of our weekly winter surveillance report .🦠🧵 This week's data shows an increase in COVID-19 activity, which is circulating at medium levels. Flu activity has also increased, particularly in those aged 15 to 24, but remains at baseline levels.

It was great to speak with the BBC’s State of Us podcast about the science behind vaccines in the wake of the pandemic, alongside a local politician Paul Frew www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

SAVE THE DATE! The 2026 UK CellularMicrobiologyNetwork meeting will be held 22nd - 23rd of June at @wwiem-qub.bsky.social in Belfast. Researchers from the UK and beyond are invited to share exciting work on the mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions. Follow us to stay tuned! www.ukcellmicro.org

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to: Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”

Phew thankfully I waited until an hour before my T cell lecture to update my slides