After years in the making, Joe McKellar @viroscope.bsky.social’s final PhD paper is finally out today in PNAS! 🎉 🎉🎉 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New preprint alert! 🦟 <-> 🦠 <-> 🧑 I am thrilled to share our latest study on alphavirus host adaptation. More specifically, on how a single codon helps blunt alphavirus-induced host innate immune responses in mosquito and human cells. Continue reading for more! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What @memerman.bsky.social learned from Howard Temin

New job offer in the team! If you're an experienced virologist (with a PhD), join us to work on Horizon Europe-funded APPEAL project in the vibrant city of Montpellier, South of France! euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/359640

He resolved that he would not stop either, even though it was a huge sacrifice on his part. I believe this is what we owe our trainees: so long as they are invested in their work, we must be as well, even if it seems like the world is on fire around us, both literally and figuratively. 10/

My Keynote Talk at the CSHL 50th annual meeting on Retroviruses is now online: leadingstrand.cshl.edu/Keynote/Medi... Some more general parts such as ~ the 8'30" mark with the "What I learned from Howard Temin" slide and ~ the 40' mark with the "What is important to me in science" section.

Thrilled to share our latest @cp-cell.bsky.social. We present VICAR (VIral-induced Centromeric DNA Amplification and Recognition), a new defense system to detect viruses in the nucleus based on nuclear cGAS. www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

It was such beautiful day and retirement party!

How much of the unfortunate, devastating history of that period are we hellbent on recreating in the US? Parents of autistic children would be crazy to trust information of their precious children to this effort.

Yvette Raphael, Gilead Sciences—with special recognition of Moupali Das—and Wesley Sundquist have been awarded the Mani L. Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award for their work on HIV drug lenacapavir. www.aaas.org/news/road-le...

Really excited to share the final version of Rechel Geiger’s PhD thesis paper with help from friends www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Rechel is now back in medical school training to become a kickass physician-scientist

This paper completes a three paper arc (so far) performed by three remarkable students co-mentored by me and @memerman.bsky.social Patrick Michell (@psmitchej.bsky.social) first identified loop L4 as the key interface with the NP proteins of orthomyxoviruses (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23084925/)

Our study exploring the evolutionary mechanism of alphavirus opal codon retention is now online! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

My dear friend, collaborator and scientific hero is recognised as one of 100 most influential people in the world by TIME. Sometimes the good guys get the recognition they deserve. healthcare.utah.edu/newsroom/new...

Federal funding of biomedical research has been a remarkably successful partnership, with benefits that are so intertwined in our daily lives that they can be easy to take for granted. So what will we lose if the U.S. continues to defund research? theconversation.com/cuts-to-scie...

Proud of this work, led by the amazing Jeannette Tenthorey (now Assistant Professor at UCSF), demonstrating the adaptive power of single indel mutations in host-virus arms races, but a little sad that this is the coda to her amazing postdoc in the Malik & Emerman labs. www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

Yesterday when I talked to @maxkozlov.bsky.social about this, I wondered which of my NIH-funded colleagues would have their grants cut. All of them. Research on pandemic viruses has now ground to a screeching halt in the US. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Furthermore, his wife, Betsy Arakawa, died of a virus that most people have not even heard about. Hantavirus is a rare virus, but has a very high mortality. As a virologist, I am greatly concerned about RFK Jr.'s threat:" We're going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years".

Hope to see many of my colleagues on Friday. www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f... Science is for everyone. For everyone to do, and for everyone to benefit from. Weather forecast has also improved for Friday, but waterproof your posters just in case.

Sad to share news of the loss of a virology legend after a long battle with cancer. We will miss you dearly, Ann Palmenberg. www.cressfuneralservice.com/obituaries/a...

Today we’re celebrating Dr. Jon Cooper’s retirement and his 40 years in Basic Sciences @fredhutch.bsky.social. We’re grateful for his many contributions to science and his service to Fred Hutch and the division, including serving nine years as division director. Congrats Jon!

Patrick Mitchell (@psmitchej.bsky.social), Thornton Thompson and I wrote an OpEd, with support from 650+ biomedical researchers across Washington State (450+ at time of submission). www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comm... List: www.moltkelab.com/s/NIH-OpEd-S...

👀Our latest work, led by Amandine Le Corf fantastic PhD student alumni @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social . Great collab @denard.bsky.social @psudmant.bsky.social Genomic and functional #adaptations in #GBP5 highlight specificities of #bat antiviral innate #immunity 🦇🦠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congrats to Fred Hutch virologist Dr. Keith Jerome on being named a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a prestigious leadership group within the American Society for #Microbiology! Read more: bit.ly/3EFmnb1 @uwvirology.bsky.social

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

To all undergraduate students enrolled in the state of Washington: are you interested in microbiology and looking for a summer research opportunity? If so, please apply to the Biomedical Summer Training and Engagement Program, hosted by the Department of Microbiology at UW (Seattle).

We are looking for a #postdoc to discover cell-autonomous innate immune antiviral factors in mammals, based on newly-identified defense of prokaryotes! #EvoCure #comparativeImmunology #virology Please share @inserm.fr @ciri-lyon.bsky.social @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social ciri.ens-lyon.fr/teams/lp2l/j...

HIV capsids: orchestrators of innate immune evasion, pathogenesis and pandemicity www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Thanks Harmit!

Many thanks to @jhigginswriter.bsky.social @fredhutch.bsky.social for this fantastic article showcasing our latest dTAG study! I am so proud of our amazing team!!

So, you may ask, why do I get so angry about the new liberal spin on RFK Jr, as in, "he gets some things right, so let's collaborate on those" or "we have to work with him because he has a huge following we need to reach"? Because I've seen this movie before. 1/

Please distribute far and wide! I am part of this initiative and very excited about it. Join us and help improve publishing!!! Happy to answer any questions you might have.

I don't think it should be a controversial opinion that batshit crazy persons should not be in charge of the health of hundreds of millions of people, including millions of young and unborn kids, who don't have the luxury of you learning from your mistakes. Also, see Samoa and the measles vaccine.

Brilliant thesis defense today by Rechel Geiger; "Evolutionary strategies for MxA antiviral proteins to overcome breadth-specificity tradeoffs in Orthomyxovirus restriction" at the Fred Hutch and UW MCB Program. She is the 11th PhD student that @harmitmalik.bsky.social and I have co-mentored

Sometimes we forget that there have been (at least) 4 epidemics of influenza A viruses in horses, starting around 1872, 1956, 1963, and 1989..they seem to be quite susceptible - and here is another example.

Yikes! Look who's giving a Keynote at the 2025 Cold Spring Harbor Retroviruses Meeting. This was the first meeting I ever attended as a graduate student, 4 decades ago.

Excellent article on AIDS Denialism and its persistence even now amongst those who deny the evidence on vaccine efficacy, COVID19 aetiology and the origins of SARS CoV-2. Unfortunately many of these charlatans are either in the MAGA admin or adjacent to it. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Many people do not grasp the real risk of an outbreak of avian influenza in humans. ⚠️ Large outbreaks in livestock ⚠️Unexplained sporadic human cases ⚠️ Infected farm workers ⚠️ Tainted raw milk. Viruses thrive on opportunities and right now #H5N1 in US is at the unchecked opportunities buffet.

RFK Jr. questions whether HIV causes AIDS (it does), says vaccines do not undergo testing (they do), spreads conspiracy theories about COVID—he is a dangerous pick for HHS. Go to this site, it will make it easy to let your representatives know you care about this www.safecommunitiescoalition.org/rfk

Reviewing a "short" communication with over 15 Extended Figures and 4 supplements is not going to be the easy assignment I thought it would be when I agreed to have it done by Monday.

Carley Gray will defend her thesis entitled “A CRISPR-screening approach to increase HIV latency reversal to improve an HIV cure strategy” on Friday at 1:30PM Pacific. She'll mostly talk about this pre-print, www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Let me know if you want a Zoom link.