A long thread about mpox and the context specific nature of outbreaks prompted by the large outbreak of MPXV Clade IIb happening at the moment in Sierra Leone:

📢Today Pathoplexus announces the inclusion of 2 new viral pathogens: RSV (A & B) and HMPV. These respiratory viruses cause a serious health burden, particularly in infants & the vulnerable, & Pathoplexus aims to support sequence sharing to improve understanding & response. 1/4

ARTIC2 now has THREE investigators at the @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social on the project. @aineotoole.bsky.social is leading on building analytical packages for genome analysis (building on her work on Civet, Squirrel, Pangolin and others) edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Delighted to see launch of ARTIC-2 project - colleagues @aineotoole.bsky.social @arambaut.bsky.social and @rmcolq.bsky.social working with @pathogenomenick.bsky.social @articnetwork.bsky.social to develop low-cost pathogen genome sequencing 🧪🦠🧫 edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Absolutely thrilled to announce the launch of ARTIC2 - a £5.5M 5 year project funded by @wellcometrust.bsky.social to build on the ARTIC approach of low-cost, globally accessible genome sequencing for surveillance of outbreaks, epidemics and endemic diseases: www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/am...

Wendy Barclay and I are recruiting a postdoc for a project investigating the evolution of swine influenza viruses and how this impacts future pandemic potential. Job is based at Imperial's South Kensington campus. Drop me a DM/email for more details. www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

I've written a quick post about the recent changes to the @articnetwork.bsky.social fieldbioinformatics pipeline virological.org/t/fieldbioin...

🦠 We are recruiting two 2-year postdocs to work at the intersection of virus genomics and infectious disease. jobs.rvc.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx... Please share widely!

Please share widely! We are recruiting a 3-year postdoc at the RVC to develop new methodology to infer epidemic dynamics from wild animal viromes sampled across changeable environments. Further details: jobs.rvc.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx... Feel free to reach out with any questions. Deadline Feb 9th

🧪🎅 12 Days of Tools for Science Management 🦠🎄 Twas the weeks before Christmas when all through the lab, not a beaker was stirring, not even a culture-of-Pseudomonas. The meetings have lessened (kinda), the textbooks are closed.. & I found myself reflecting on how we get things done in academia (1/4)

Congratulations to my dear friend & colleague Placide Mbala at INRB in Kinshasa! 🎉 He is one of Nature's 10 people who shaped science this year He is an incredible scientist and person who has dedicated his career to fighting diseases like Ebola, COVID, and #mpox. 🙌 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Really exciting development from the @pathoplexus.org team, with a new curated database for mpox genomic data. Glad to see these rapid data sharing efforts taking shape, guided by consistent, transparent governance and an ongoing commitment to equity and fairness.

@pathoplexus.org now accepting MPXV genomes. I've played around with it's upload interface and it's genuinely so intuitive to use and has a lot of great error catching functionality!

Fabulous work with colleagues in Burundi, who took up Mpox sequencing to understand the situation AND are willing to share pre-publication, shows the expanding tree, and evidence for several introductions not taking off. In progress virological.org/t/preliminar...

A REALLY big flavi-like virus...https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.08.574764v1.full.pdf

Just finished some new moon ornaments for my tree! Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Triton, and the Moon. Hope you like them! 🐡🔭🧪