🦠 NEW | Fully funded PhDs in #virology We are excited to offer three fantastic opportunities to do joint PhDs between @cvrinfo.bsky.social and @pirbrightinst.bsky.social. Funded for UK home students. Deadline for applications: Fri 8 May 26 Links and details below ⬇️

Protein Language Models (PLMs) could transform outbreak response New research from @kieranlamb.bsky.social & colleagues show that PLMs can identify mutation hotspots and key features of viral proteins - even from a single sequence. www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/...

3rd human #H5N1 case of 2026 in #Cambodia A 3-year-old boy from Oddar Meanchey province, currently hospitalized and receiving treatment. 🔬🧪😷🐓🦠🥼💉 2026: 3 cases, 0 deaths Since 2023: 37 cases, 15 deaths (CFR 40.5%) Since 2004: 93 cases, 52 deaths (CFR 55.9%)

From @systemsvirology.bsky.social Experimental SARS-CoV-2 infection of Rhinolophus ferrumequinum www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🎶 another one bites the dust 🎶

Lab Leakers: "SARS-CoV-2 can't infect bats, so it must have been made in a lab". Science: "Let's do the experiment". SARS-CoV-2 behaves exactly like one would expect in a reservoir species - low-level infection, no overt disease, etc. Elegant study from Sato Lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We are delighted to announce that our new website is now live! Check it out: www.cvr.ac.uk

Want to work on viral community ecology and virus genomics? 🔎 🧬 🦠 Come and work with us at RVC! Applications for a 0.5 FTE lab technician role now open, suitable for someone with lab experience and a relevant BSc/MSc. jobs.rvc.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Very cool work! Really pinning down some important hypotheses about virus emergence! got myself a comment in the nyt article (although @davidlrobertson.bsky.social had the best quote! 👀) Archived article link here: archive.md/UjxJ0

There's a common misconception that zoonotic viruses require significant adaptation to jump from animals to cause human epidemics. Not so 👇. Further, we see clear signs of 1977 flu experiencing cell passage, prior to epidemic. SARS-CoV-2? Business as usual. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In new study led by Brendan Larsen, we map functional constraint across the Nipah virus F protein to define constrained epitopes for antibody targeting and identify mutations that stabilize the prefusion conformation for vaccine immunogens. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We have an open Assistant Professor position (tenure track) @ethz.ch in Computational Immunology - ethz.ch/en/the-eth-z... Please apply / share!

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.

What a great conference!! Leaving Brisbane inspired about the future of structural phylogenetics! Thanks again to the organisers @cpuentelelievre.bsky.social @proteinmechanic.bsky.social and Jordan Douglas for an amazing work putting it all together!

Very excited to be in (slightly rainy until tomorrow ☔) Brisbane attending the first Australasian Protein Structural Phylogenetics Meeting #strphy26 @strphy.bsky.social Catch me at my talk tomorrow afternoon or at welcome drinks tonight! 🥂

First human #H5N1 case of 2026 in #Cambodia: a 30-year-old man from Kampot province. Sequencing, virus isolation & animal investigations ongoing. Dead chicken at home before onset. Patient has since recovered. 🦠💉😷🐓🥼🔬🧪 Sequencing, contact tracing, and poultry investigations ongoing.

Our paper on inferring context dependent entropy using protein language models is officially out in NAR Genomics & Bioinformatics! 🧬🤖 with Adam Strange, Jumpei Ito, and @systemsvirology.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... details below... #NARGAB

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...

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

Great opportunity to learn how to make very cool looking phylogenies by a real tree wizard @evogytis.bsky.social ! 🌲🧙‍♂️ Don't miss out!

🎉 Congratulations to Dr Daniel Weir for recently passing his Viva! Daniels research explored how influenza A virus infection moves directly between cells, independently of virus particles, focusing on how infection induces the formation of tunnelling nanotube-like structures.

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..