🚨New Influenza Tool🚨 Interested in IAV mutations? Looking for markers of mammalian adaptation? Frustrated by converting between IAV numbering systems? The #Flu-MutationExplorer, a new tool from @cvrbioinfo.bsky.social and @royalvetcollege.bsky.social, is here to help: flu-gdb.cvr.gla.ac.uk (1/n)

Big news for those of us clicking around on trees all the time!

Cool opportunity to work on avian flu with a great team! lnu.se/en/meet-linn...

1/ 🚀 Exciting news: we’ve just released the first Nextclade dataset for Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), developed in collaboration with the European Non-Polio Enterovirus Network (ENPEN). 👉🏻 Check out the dataset on Nextclade! clades.nextstrain.org?dataset-name... #EVD68 #Enterovirus #OpenData

Last week, a human in Washington was hospitalized for H5N5, the first human case of highly pathogenic H5N5 in the US. doh.wa.gov/newsroom/h5n.... Thanks to work from Anna Jaeger and Stephen Shank in our lab, we've added this strain to our North American phylogeny: nextstrain.org/groups/moncl...

Our lab's paper describing the North American H5N1 epizootic is out now in Nature! So thrilled to have this out, and congratulations to @lambod50.bsky.social for all the fantastic work on this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our lab's first paper is out! Led by Jordan Ort, we developed NextClade datasets that enable rapid H5 clade assignment via NextClade. We deployed these during the start of the H5 cattle outbreak, and we finally published the paper in Virus Evolution academic.oup.com/ve/article/1...

I've always loved Ted Chiang and his writing

TreeSort is out at MBE! Fresh off the press so DOI below is not yet working, but you can find the article here: academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... 💡If you want to apply it to your data - please see the tutorial here github.com/flu-crew/Tre...

Emma is great, and leading the way on making better ways to share and aggreggate data. This is an awesome opportunity!!

The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601

This is incredibly courageous and brave. Support NIH staffers. They stuck out their necks for us. Now we have to have their backs.

This is so useful! Very good to know that someone is looking

The Virology Unit at IPC has 3 positions open in #OneHealth: *Postdoc – Reconstructing Past Outbreaks *Postdoc – Environmental Surveillance *Clinical Manager These aren’t just jobs. They’re front-row seats to global health in action. Ready? tinyurl.com/57rvxcau #ViroSky #IDSky 🦠🔬🧬🥼🧪

This week @scottehensley.bsky.social and I briefed the Pennsylvania state House Agriculture and Rural Affairs and Health committees on H5N1. It was super interesting and useful, and we got some great questions. www.youtube.com/live/yRxdeG9..., we got one question that I would like to crowd source:

Has anyone ever been to a MEEGID meeting, and if so, what did you think? www.elsevier.com/events/confe...

Really lovely work here lead by Janathan Pekar, @worobey.bsky.social @peacockflu.bsky.social @influenzal.bsky.social and many others.

What is happening in the USA, including U.S. government censorship of research, is unacceptable. The least we can do is to state our opposition publicly. Please have a look at this declaration and--if you agree--put your name to it. docs.google.com/document/u/0...

Dear Virology Community, please see ASV’s statement to our members and the scientific community. asv.org/asv-statemen...

It made me so happy to see that MMWR is back!

I agree with Scott. This is important because: 1. This shows that cattle are susceptible to other H5N1 viruses, not just B3.13. 2. D1.1 viruses are currently transmitting really efficiently through wild birds in North America, and are very widespread. ...

Our next #IFEEAI webinar speaker is @lhmoncla.bsky.social , Assistant Professor @upenn.edu Title: Intensive transmission in wild, migratory birds drove rapid geographic dissemination and repeated spillovers of #H5N1 #birdflu into agriculture in North America.

Per an NIH source: “Discussions with colleagues have suggested that if the universities all come together and raise hell about the delays to funding caused by not holding meetings, that might move the needle. From every state. There are well-funded universities in red states that will be impacted.”

Call your senators! Do it today! It's better than wallowing

Our lab's 2nd preprint is now on bioRxiv! Led by Jordan Ort, we made H5 datasets that enable rapid clade assignment with Nextclade. We released these builds in the spring (due to cow flu) & finally wrote the paper! TLDR: it's fast, easy, accurate, and we hope, useful www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I'm co-organizing a symposium and we are looking for people who do cool work on infectious disease and climate change! Who is doing cool stuff in that space?

Really proud to share our preprint describing early adaptation of H5N1 to US dairy cattle, and showing how these mutations enhance the ability of the virus to infect other mammals, such as pigs and humans. With @influenzal.bsky.social @vidhid.bsky.social @drclairesmith.bsky.social and many more!

Really excited to share that my postdoctoral work on HPAI in North America is now preprinted! Please feel free to reach out with any feedback and thoughts! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Just in time for the holidays, our lab has just submitted our first lab led paper www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! We use phylodynamics to reconstruct how H5N1 got to North America and spread so rapidly. Full thread coming post holidays, but for now, super proud of @lambod50.bsky.social

Senior Postdoctoral Research position open in EEB Princeton puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

If an #H5N1 pandemic starts tomorrow or in three months, there will be little mystery as to how it happened. The conditions are all there. They have been for a while. So in some ways the more interesting question to me at the moment is: Why aren’t we in a pandemic yet? Story here, 🧵 to come: 🧪#IDSky

This truly makes me queasy. I really hope no one drinks this milk

Additional information from Scott and Jesse

Last week, a teenager in British Columbia contracted H5N1, the first human case acquired in Canada. The BC CDC and and Canadian Food Inspection Agency have released sequences from this infected person and domestic and wild birds sampled in BC, which we've just added to Nextstrain. A thread:

New tool announcement! Thanks to a lot of work from Jordan Ort (an awesome student in the lab), with help from @richardneher , Todd Davis, Tommy Lam, and Sam Shepard, the H5s are now on Nextclade! clades.nextstrain.org A thread below:

Preliminary report on genomic epidemiology of the 2024 H5N1 influenza A virus outbreak in U.S. cattle. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this and, of course, first and foremost the data producers and those involved in the response. virological.org/t/preliminar...

In response to the H5N1 infections in cows and now a human in Texas, we've just updated our North America specific H5Nx Nextstrain build with the cow and goat sequences, which are viewable under "Species-grouped: Ruminant": nextstrain.org/groups/moncl.... A few notes.

Such a great resource, and wonderful to see this in print! Can recommend for anyone getting into genomic epidemiology.

Excited to announce a postdoc position in my group! 🦠📈🧪 Come help us understand variability in immune responses to influenza vaccination, especially repeat vaccination, using data from a randomized trial and more. Great collaborators, methods, and problem. cobeylab.uchicago.edu/p/join-us

Have you been wondering what's going on with avian influenza in North America? Check out our lab's @nextstrain narrative on phylodynamic analysis of H5Nx evolution and transmission here! nextstrain.org/groups/moncl...