We’re very excited about our hookworm anemia vaccine and hope it becomes the second licensed human parasitic disease vaccine after malaria and the first human parasitic worm vaccine blogs.bcm.edu/2026/03/19/f...

Matt Ridley gave the inaugural "NIH Scientific Freedom Lecture Series" earlier today and I just wanted to run through some of the main claims he made - you'll be unsurprised to learn that almost all of them are false. Here's his summary slide - let's start there. 🧵👇

Again, if Reform's opponents can't work out how to beat this guy, then they really have no business being in politics at all. The most target-rich politician in the UK

🦟" #YellowFever in the Americas 🌎: Nearly 3/4 of cases reported from #Colombia 🇨🇴" via @outbreaknewstoday.substack.com.web.brid.gy open.substack.com/pub/outbreak...

Out Now! LRP8 is a functional receptor for yellow fever virus #MicroSky

Very cool 😎 ! This study identifies the neuronal circuit that translates psychological stress (a feeling) into skin inflammation leading to eczema flare-ups www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪 #immunosky

Join us! We're hiring a Research Scientist to support projects on mosquito immunity and mosquito‑borne disease transmission. Ideal for a post‑bac or recent M.S. looking to gain experience in cutting-edge research in vector biology. isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/IowaStateJob...

🧐Looking for a #job? The University of Sydney ( @sydney.edu.au) is inviting applications for the 2-year Aola Richards #Postdoctoral Fellowship in #Entomology. 🦟 🕷️ 🪰 Application deadline 18 April 2026. More info: usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_E...

Worse and worse decisions from #UKLabour government - who will stand up for global solidarity, health, prosperity and the mutual benefits arising from investing in supporting the most economically disadvantaged both within the UK and internationally?

A colleague summed up the current situation as "publish AND perish"

Yellow fever in the Americas: Nearly 3/4 of cases reported from Colombia open.substack.com/pub/outbreak...

Sorrywhatpardon?

A former US official may be dumbfounded. I’m not.

Registration and abstract submission for the 10th anniversary meeting of the Luxembourg society for microbiology are still open!! A superb programme on May 12 and 13, check it out: www.microbiology.lu/lmd-2026/

Viruses in the #ocean outnumber cells and shape ecosystems, yet their dynamics remain poorly understood. @sullivan-lab.bsky.social used high-resolution sampling of blue-ocean waters to reveal extensive depth- and diel-driven population dynamics beneath the surface.🧪 #MicroSky plos.io/4lf9zJE

Another day of abject misery on UK rail. Fire at Glasgow central - trespassers elsewhere (again). No idea whether we’ll get past Penrith. Time to buy a new car.

We threw the kitchen sink and more at these viruses! 🔬 Go check out the whole manuscript and discover some cool microscopy techniques applied on single viral particles!

#StLucia reports 1st #chikungunya case in 5 years #Caribbean open.substack.com/pub/outbreak...

After remaining silent for almost a year about the U.S. measles outbreak, NIH/CDC poseur Jay Bhattacharya is now recommending measles vaccines. And this is where he gets to see the impact of the destruction of trust in public health and vaccines, for which he is partially responsible.

This man needed therapy, not a job running the US Military.

European regulators have greenlit a new one-dose compound that could help African countries get rid of sleeping sickness. https://scim.ag/3MSxrG8

With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

Why does it still take hours to submit a paper? Supposedly AI can replace us, maybe some journals can come up with something useful using AI where you just submit the front page and additional info and the info is extracted. Rather typing in author contributions…total waste of time.

Registration and abstract submission for the international Meeting on Arboviruses and their Vectors (a UK Microbiology Society event), Liverpool 1-2 September 2026, are now open! Link: microbiologysociety.org/event/full-e...

The FIFA World Cup used to be the zenith of world football as an occasion. But the debased, corrupt & embarrassing rule of Gianni Infantino as head of FIFA has massively tarnished & diminished the World Cup.

Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14

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...

Despite decades of intensive research, current approaches to treating #NeurodegenerativeDiseases only slow down the seemingly inevitable. Could recent data associating #vaccines with reduced risk of #dementia offer an unexpected beacon of hope?🧪 @sparrerlab.bsky.social

It's important to put this in context of one of the first things Taubenberger did when he took over as the director of NIAID - he canceled the premier pandemic preparedness network ("CREID" - which we were part of) because it was deemed "unsafe for Americans". Cc. @maxkozlov.bsky.social.

How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller? Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase. 1/n

Seeing that Man U owner Ratcliffe claims the UK is being “colonised”- how many Englishmen in their starting line up against West Ham? Shaw and Maguire?

It shouldn’t be a matter of talking about it. We all know this. And have for decades. It’s about restructuring careers.

This is racist bating, anti-immigrant stuff from Jim Ratcliffe: a tax avoiding Monaco resident who gutted Manchester United FC (not to the extent of the Glazers) & presided over years of under-investment at Grangemouth oil refinery. Have we not had enough of being lectured by such folk?

One of the maddest elements of Brexit - and there are *many* - is the rewards that continue to be lavished on the blithering idiots who sold it & continue to be proved wrong about everything every day…

Here we go…

You may recall that in January of 2025, artist Ann Telnaes announced that she had quit The Washington Post after editors killed a cartoon that depicted owner Jeff Bezos, among others, genuflecting to Trump. This cartoon feels even more relevant this week.

BREAKING: Over 680 members of the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have endorsed articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. (1/2 🧵)

Scientists from LSTM and the Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases (CRID) have discovered a new genetic mutation in malaria mosquitoes that causes insecticide resistance in Africa. Read more: lstm.ac/4qjRWcu.

Endogenous retroviruses synthesize heterologous chimeric RNAs to reinforce human early embryo development www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Unpopular opinion, including in my own family, but every European nation should boycott this tournament.

🦟 🦠 Notre équipe du laboratoire "Génomique Évolutive, Modélisation et Santé" (GEMS) @cnrsecologie.bsky.social @pasteur.fr a identifié un gène clé impliqué dans la sensibilité du #moustique Aedes aegypti au #virus de la #dengue www.inee.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/...

Good stuff. And well done Spain, and hopefully other countries will follow. Upsetting all the right people. Whose companies we should of course also avoid.

Oh.

Recovery of viral RNA from centuries old human tissue is genuinely exciting. This changes the horizons for recovery of ancient virus genomes.

A truly great programme, and if Europe is serious about taking leadership in science we need more investment, not less, abnd more purely curiosity driven research. The crisis in science isn’t too many papers- it’s too many impact statements and not enough funding.

Jan 30th is World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day! Progress proves what’s possible. Guinea worm cases fell from 3.5 million to just 15 and sleeping sickness cases dropped from 40,000 annually to fewer than 600 in 2024. Sustained investment works. #WorldNTDDay #UniteActEliminate #BeatNTDs

“joining the war on cancer, on the side of cancer,” and other brilliant moves from the HHS brain trust

Has the MRC research funding ‘pause’ been covered by any major news network? It feels like it should be a major news story

Get ready for the 4th IMAV meeting!

This is simply insane - demanding the removal of a perfectly safe preservative will require changing the entire production and distribution pipeline. For no reason whatsoever. While the money is held up, tens of thousands of children are at risk of dying from preventable diseases.