“Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.” #CityMakingMath 50 reasons to want more walkable cities.

Persistent mirusvirus infection in the marine protist Aurantiochytrium www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Multiple rotavirus species encode fusion-associated small transmembrane (FAST) proteins with cell type-specific activity journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Check out the latest work from our lab, led by Arash Latifkar @ara-latifkar.bsky.social , www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our new preprint is out 🥳🥳🥳 Henipaviruses, like Nipah and Hendra, package their genomes inside helical shells built by thousands of nucleoproteins. These nucleocapsids are essential to protect the viral RNA, but how do they ever let the polymerase in to read the sequence? 👇

1/ Excited to share our new study with @brumbaugh-lab.bsky.social, out in @natbiotech.nature.com! P-bodies selectively sequester RNAs encoding cell fate regulators, often from the preceding developmental stage. Releasing these RNAs can drive changes in cell identity. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats to the Blue Jays. I’m going to sulk for a few days but what an amazing season for the @mariners.com Proud of this team

Virus driven Disruption of Transcription Termination (DoTT) generated cellular Z-RNAs are bona fide ZBP1 ligands driving cell death as a host response to counter viral disruption of the cellular transcriptional machinery @nature.com @foxchasecancer.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧬 Exciting news from our lab 🧬 The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has approved our project studying KSHV and RNA decay: our first grant since re-launching the lab in Switzerland 🎉 We’re now looking for a Postdoc and a PhD student to join the team (start date January 2026) - please repost!

I made a sign for the lab with our informal lab motto, inspired by this convo between @itaiyanai.bsky.social and Martin Lercher: nightscience.buzzsprout.com/1744020/epis.... A good reminder that talking is among the best forms of thinking!

In new study led by @bdadonaite.bsky.social, we measure how spike mutations affect function & antigenicity of spike of KP.3.1.1 strain of SARS-CoV-2. Sheds light on how key neutralizing epitopes are changing & importance of RBD up/down motion. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Collaborative study with Kharpeskyy lab @dalhousieu.bsky.social + our lab @ulethbridge.ca (under review) shows: sequence features—not secondary structure—of 5′ UTRs give viral & cellular mRNAs resistance to SARS-CoV-2 Nsp1 host shutoff. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

i love you hubble

Giant virus endogenization in Acanthamoeba we covered more in detail in a separate manuscript published some weeks ago in @bmc.springernature.com Biology, in a great collaboration with John Archibald's group at Dalhousie: bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10..... 6/7

Crab-like creatures are famed for having evolved five times in evolutionary history. But anteaters have evolved at least 12 times--in half the evolutionary span. Cool story by @jakebuehler.bsky.social for @science.org

Huge congratulations to Dr. Emma LeBlanc on her successful PhD thesis defence yesterday! As my first PhD student, Emma was instrumental in getting my lab up and running, in the midst of a pandemic, while managing to be very productive and do some exciting science along the way! #proudPI

Finally out! I’m thrilled to share our new paper (Wolin et al., Cell 2025). This paper describes SPIDR, a high-throughput method for mapping RBP binding sites. By combining #SPIDR with #cryoEM, we identified the exact binding site of LARP1 within the #mRNA channel of the 40S ribosomal subunit.

It’s too late to save these lost young lives in Texas, but not too late to avert the next tragedy that could be fully avoided. It’s one thing to say you’re making things more efficient and quite another to gut something essential with no replacement. Turn the f’ing lights back on! /fin

'The myth of meritocracy in science collapses under the financial sacrifices expected at every career stage. From unpaid internships and self-funded conferences to underpaid graduate and postdoctoral positions, the hidden costs of ‘doing science’ are profound.' journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

💥 Couldn’t be more stoked our study identifying a completely new CMV virion surface complex involved in cell entry is now published at Nature Micro 🦠 H/T @paramyxologist.bsky.social + Lauren Henderson, Erica Ollmann Saphire Chris Benedict @natmicrobiol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New CRISPR technology developed by @stanleyqilab.bsky.social‬, Mengting Han & team could pave the way for potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases like ALS and spinal muscular dystrophy:

Nature research paper: Probing condensate microenvironments with a micropeptide killswitch https://go.nature.com/4mMlGyc

🚨🚨 News from the @castello-lab.bsky.social and @shabazlab.bsky.social. Our work, led by Louisa Iselin, reveals pervasive changes in the RNA-bound proteome induced by interferon. #RNA, #immunity, #interferon, #host-virus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

2nd is the brilliant preprint of @corcoranlab.bsky.social & @rorymulloy.bsky.social. It’s a deep dive into all things N*, & every other paragraph drops some new, delightful discovery. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 15/34

…prompted me to take a closer look, and for reasons I’ll describe below, I now believe rumors of N*’s death are exaggerated. First, XEC is in terminal decline, replaced by variants with full N* expression, so N* is back in fashion. 3/34 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

SGs can form as a response to dsRNA detection, but when Mulloy induced SG formation via a dsRNA-independent pathway, N* still stopped SGs. Mutation of two essential AA for dsRNA binding (K257, K261) showed that N*’s dsRNA binding was required for SG antagonism. 23/34

An awesome preprint on the novel, unsung SARS-CoV-2 N* protein came out recently, authored by @corcoranlab.bsky.social and @rorymulloy.bsky.social. I’ve previously written on N*’s demise in XEC, the top variant for several months, but… threadreaderapp.com/thread/18373... 1/34

If people of means are interested in establishing a 2025 “Institute for Advanced Study” for displaced/defunded biomedical scientists, I know many people who will help, including myself. @mcuban.bsky.social @arcadiascience.com @arcinstitute.org

Excited to share our new paper on Nature - how Ku accommodates Alu expansion in primates by binding to dsRNA, providing a clue for both the high levels of Ku and its essentiality in human cells. Thank @chaolinzhang @hchung03 @LenaSteckelberg More to come www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The parasitic larvae of a wasp inject a virus into their caterpillar hosts that makes the caterpillars aggressive and even cannibalistic when food is scarce, increasing the odds that the parasites and their hosts will survive. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Non-spike protein mutations in #SARSCoV2, likely to impact viral properties, are understudied. @brucelab.bsky.social show that a #nucleocapsid protein mutation in Delta variant enhances viral growth in vitro & in vivo by increasing viral genome #encapsidation @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4iBYsaI

As new PhDs graduate, I'm reflecting on the below convocation address I delivered at my own PhD ceremony about science's most essential question: "How do we know that?" Equal parts #NightScience meditation and a call to action. Sometimes we need to hear from our younger selves. #StandUpForScience

I realized the novel viral protein I study (SARS2 N*M210) was going extinct, which to a nerd is quite sad. HOWEVER, N*M210 is making a big comeback... R204 (yellow) mutation sequence enables N* synthesis. You can see N*-producing viruses are taking over (once again) Evolution in real time.

Congratulations to Mark Carney and the Liberal Party on their election victory. The bond between Europe and Canada is strong — and growing stronger.

Had to be done (apologies if similar memes have been shared)

Happy birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope, launched from the Kennedy Space Center #OTD in 1990. Here's to a remarkable 35 years of imaging the Cosmos. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ Leave your favorite Hubble images in the replies!

Viral piracy of host RNA phosphatase DUSP11 by avipoxviruses journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Jupiter taken by Voyager 2 - From Ian Regan - https://flic.kr/p/8wi2Ey

Read here our newest researcher highlight on Dr. Christine Roden, assistant professor of Biochemistry at University of Montreal, working on what she affectionately calls "RNA blobs". She's also becoming an active member of the canadian RNA community! www.rnacanada.ca/researcher-h...

A positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus acquired a negative-sense open reading frame through recombination journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

"Here we present evidence that an individual insertion of an Alu element in the genome of the hominoid ancestor may have contributed to tail-loss evolution."

Absolutely. The work by @tamanash.bsky.social is a tour de force and an example of clever, beautiful science towards better understanding of alphavirus biology. Based on what I heard, an example of a great post-doc & future star in virology. Read his preprint: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39229031/

It’s a great pleasure to advertise the pre-print of Emma’s OAS2 story! doi.org/10.1101/2025... One gene, two transcripts, two antiviral molecules with different virus targets, using different antiviral mechanisms… a great place to release into the community! Well done Emma!

We wondered why so many infections fail to progress through all life-cycle stages. We combined our live-cell imaging technologies with multiplexed smFISH and found that many viruses fail to transcribe one or multiple genes.

Happy to share our review on the cellular responses to RNA damage 🥂 Congrats to joined first authors Jacqueline Cordes & @shubozhao.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

too much shit has been happening lately so here’s a small cleanse. it won’t fix anything in the world, but hopefully it makes you smile today 🌌

Why can't these viruses be friends? In a new study from her PhD @cvrinfo.bsky.social, #AnnaSims shows that #SARS-CoV-2 infections segregate into distinct microdomains as they spread. But why? (1/N) journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Our work on how a conserved core network in the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid NTD affects stability, RNA-binding affinity, and selectivity of the domain is now online. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our first story on nuclear paraspeckles! Led by @sneadlab.bsky.social, this is the culmination of a ~4 year effort in collab. with @shrinivaslab.bsky.social. Can’t wait to see more paraspeckle stories from the future Snead Lab at Northwestern 🫧 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...