New preprint led by our MSc student Wenye Li!! 🎉 @systemsvirology.bsky.social What we find is a historic genetic interplay between sarbecoviruses and their horseshoe bat hosts' ACE2 receptor! 🦇 🧵... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🦠🧪🧬🚨 New paper and database alert: the new IMG/VR release is now MetaVR ! We have a new website - meta-virome.org - with quick search capabilities for the >24M viruses, >12M vOTUs, and >42M protein clusters (including >790k with predicted structures !). academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Big congrats to Matt Turnbull @samjwilsonphd.bsky.social and all co-authors!! 🎉🎉 New paper in @science.org showing how the interaction between flu PB1 and host ANP32A control how flu can replicate in higher body temperatures! 🦆🦆🦆 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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

Great to be teaching about structural predictions and metagenomic discovery of diverse viruses at @virus-metagenomics.bsky.social ! And even greater to be visiting sunny Stellenbosch! ☀️☀️

Guess the news is officially out! Extremely excited to announce that I will be starting my own laboratory at Institut Pasteur @pasteur.fr this coming spring! Slight change to my office window view from Tokyo Tower🗼 to the Tour Eiffel. 🇫🇷

Great to have you over Mahan!!! 😁😁😁 A very fun trip and the start of some exciting science collabs soon! 👀👀

New paper out in iScience @cellpress.bsky.social We show that #sand_fly biting reprograms skin fibroblasts, making them more permissive to virus infection => #fibroblasts aren’t bystanders, they help define severity/clinical outcome to infection AND #vector biting is key 👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

New preprint alert!! 🚨🚨🚨in collaboration with the Letko @fviromics.bsky.social and Baric labs! Just in case you're tired of sarbecoviruses, this time we looked at ACE2-using merbecoviruses! specifically the first HKU5r-CoVs detected in mink a couple of years ago. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🎉 Fletcher lab PhD student Emma Davies reflecting on her prize winning talk - we’re super proud of you Emma - many congrats! 🎉 @cvrinfo.bsky.social @uofgsii.bsky.social @uofgmvls.bsky.social

Huge congratulations to Emma Davis, the winner of 2025's Early Career Microbiologist of the Year prize! We agree with Emma that all of the finalists' talks were brilliant and a massive well done to everyone involved!

what a fantastic ted talk!! for those of you who haven't heard of "sociovirology" before or still wonder why it might be important this is the video to watch! 😁

Interesting interview of @peterdaszak.bsky.social by @nicolascgrey.bsky.social on the personal consequences of having become a public villain in a set of conspiracy theories www.thisrobotdreaming.com/blog/intervi...

🚨 New Web Resource Alert! 🚨 We're delighted to share Viro3D a database of >85000 viral protein structure predictions from >4400 human & animal viruses. 🔗 viro3d.cvr.gla.ac.uk 📄 www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... @molsystbiol.org @cvrinfo.bsky.social @uofgmvls.bsky.social #Virology #AlphaFold 🧪 🦠

Viro3D paper is out! We predicted 85,000 protein structures from human & animal viruses. 1/5 🧵 📑 Paper doi.org/10.1038/s443... 🔭 Explore virosphere viro3d.cvr.gla.ac.uk

New exciting resource published!! The Viro3D paper is out, describing our comprehensive database of predicted virus protein structures! 💻🧬 Work with @ulad-litvin.bsky.social , @grovearmada.bsky.social , Alex Jack, @bljog.bsky.social , @davidlrobertson.bsky.social www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

#RECOMB2026 will be in Thessaloniki, Greece on May 26-29, 2026. Satellites on May 24-25. Save the date! Το συνέδριο #RECOMB2026 θα πραγματοποιηθεί στη Θεσσαλονίκη, στις 26-29 Μαΐου 2026. Οι δορυφορικές εκδηλώσεις θα διεξαχθούν στις 24-25 Μαΐου 2026. Σημειώστε την ημερομηνία!

My understanding is that the situation for H1B visa holders outside the US today is urgent: if a current H-1B holder seeks entry into the U.S. after 12:01 a.m. EDT on September 21, 2025, it is too late to avoid the fee—entry will be restricted without the newly-imposed $100,000 employer payment.

New paper from @naturehealthglobal.bsky.social scientists identifies extensive spillover risk of an under-researched group of coronaviruses in China and Southeast Asia. 🧵 naturehealthglobal.org/new-paper-id...

Arrived in gorgeous cote d' azur just in time for the first day on the European Meeting on Viral Zoonoses! Aside from enjoying the weather and the wine I'll also be presenting some exciting (and still unpublished) work on novel sarbecovirus discovery! 🍷🏖️🦇

Great to have this one published @cp-cellreports.bsky.social !! Some sarbecoviruses can use more ACE2 orthologs than others. The reason? A few sites in the RBD modulating the receptor usage of these viruses throughout their evolution! Worth a read 👇👇👇 www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Dr. @angierasmussen.bsky.social breaking down current policies and the anti-vaccine trends/rhetoric within the US that will lead to significant global health ramifications - #19vaccinecongress

At Vaccine, our editorial team is united to defend and support immunization and vaccine science around the world. I am so proud & honored to stand alongside these outstanding scientists & clinicians to prevent disease & save lives with integrity & courage.

Great to be at Elsevier's 19th Vaccine Congress in beautiful Kyoto! 💉💉 An exceptionally important topic to global health, especially in the current political climate...

This summer's raging wildfires in Spain are the red spike in this graph. atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-i...

The shooting at CDC was domestic terrorism. It was instigated by the HHS Secretary's years-long campaign against an agency he oversees. open.substack.com/pub/rasmusse...

Fantastic work George et al!!!!

I also put together an extra ColabFold formatted database of nearly 130M phage proteins that can be used to make better viral protein structure predictions github.com/gbouras13/co...

c) With Phold we released more than 3M phage protein structure predictions (see the preprint for bulk download links), including a ColabFold generated proteome for each unique genus in INPHARED. We will make these more user-friendly soon. For now see linsalrob.github.io/PHROG_struct...

In the arms race between viruses and their hosts, viruses have found a dependable ally..

Check out our latest preprint led by Jumpei Ito and @shusukekawakubo.bsky.social !! PLANT 🌱 a protein language model for predicting antigenic cartography! PLANT takes HAs and predicts antigenic map coordinates, allowing for a deep dive into flu antigenic evolution! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

They are really destroying all research on infectious diseases.

If you're in Oxford tomorrow 👀👀

Some very inspiring science at #ismb2025 in Liverpool this week! And great to see lots of Glasgow friends! 😁 Unfortunately had to dip early to get to Oxford! Giving a talk on structural phylo and discussing some exciting projects with @mghafari.bsky.social tomorrow!👀👀

Today at 5pm, @eunbelivable.bsky.social will present her work on the Big Fantastic Viral Database (BFVD) at #ISMB2025 in BOSC. She also has a poster B-123 (tomorrow, 22nd), so please drop by to have ta chat and grab some stickers! 📄 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

We look forward seeing you Aug. 12 for our next webinar on Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. Dr Maringer @maringerlab.bsky.social will present "Virus-specific innate immune responses in Aedes aegypti". Register: lnkd.in/gJdiYGm7. @astmh.bsky.social @sbvirologia.bsky.social @utmbhealth.bsky.social

If CASP falls apart, the U.S. would lose its leadership in this area. Without U.S. federal funding, a European or Chinese organization would likely pick up the reins in some way, cofounder John Moult, tells STAT's @brittanytrang.com www.statnews.com/2025/07/16/c... via @statnews.com

We made structural predictions of representatives of each #PHROG from #phage genomes, and put the whole lot online. You can browse through montages or go to your favourite phrog directly and download its PDB. 💻🧬 #phagesky linsalrob.github.io/PHROG_struct...

The people in power who are obliterating science are working out of McCarthy’s playbook: -Don’t attack vaccines or research directly -Attack the scientists doing the work indirectly -Imply they are untrustworthy or conflicted -Accuse them of perpetrating what they are actually the targets of

Unicore is now published on GBE 🚀 Unicore rapidly identifies structural single-copy core genes from input species proteomes for phylogenetic analysis. Powered by Foldseek and ProstT5, Unicore enables linear-scale structure-based phylogeny of any given set of taxa. 🧵1/n 📃 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf109

📢 We’re delighted to announce that Professor Emma Thomson has been appointed as the new Director of the CVR. An internationally recognised expert in emerging infectious diseases, Emma will continue to lead the CVR in its role in national and global pandemic response. www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/...

Planning to apply for #research #funding from the ERC? From the next application rounds, expect changes to the: • proposal structure • evaluation process • extra funding you can request • eligibility for Starting & Consolidator #Grants (from 2027) More 👇 europa.eu/!RPHWvv

I wrote a new thing about Bobby Kennedy's crusade against vaccines in the context of H5N1. He trashed Moderna, and if there's a pandemic, he'll cash in on that decision. rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/great-week...

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

very nice work from the @fviromics.bsky.social and Baric labs uncovering some of the ways these merbecoviruses can use ACE2 as their entry receptor! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our study screening the majority of all published Merbecovirus RBD’s for cell entry phenotypes is now published in Nature Communications! (1/5) shorturl.at/gYz4E

For now, enjoy some of the prior reporting on GISAID and the many issues surrounding the organization. To put it mildly - the fact that we trust extremely critical public health data with an organization like this is mind boggling. www.science.org/content/arti...

You might be wondering why we haven't updated outbreak.info for months. Well, the reason is that GISAID cut our access in January - as they did others. Without telling us. After a ♾️ back and forth, that is now permanent. More on that soon - and why GISAID should not be trusted with critical data.

Target-rich environment, this speech. 1/n

Happy to share this interview with Weijie Zhao from NSR at #OxfordUniversityPress. It covers questions I’m often asked—why I chose Korea, AlphaFold2, my unconventional journey into academia, and research insights. Thanks again for the fun conversation. 📄 academic.oup.com/nsr/article/...