Important work that supports the ongoing vaccination trial throughput Europe by the EEHV research group @utrechtvirology.bsky.social @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social #EEHV

Merbecovirus S2 subunit vaccines elicit cross reactive antibodies and provide partial protection against MERS coronavirus www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Respiratory infections reactivate dormant metastatic breast cancer cells in mouse lungs, correlating with evidence in humans that #SARS-CoV-2 infection increases the risk of cancer-related mortality & lung metastasis 😎 biology but double whammy for cancer patients www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪

Very excited to announce that my first, first author paper, is now on BioRxiv! In this paper we unambiguously show #COPII coated vesicles in unperturbed human cells for the very first time!! Make my day and check it out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #Cryo-ET #TeamTomo #Cryo-CLEM ❄️🔬❄️🔬❄️🔬❄️🔬

New review paper from the influenza group @utrechtvirology.bsky.social together with Mengying Liu and Erik de Vries on virion motility of sialoglycan-cleaving respiratory viruses through mucus and on the surface cells in NPJ viruses @natureportfolio.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s442...

We sequenced the anti-RSV-F antibody 131-2a by mass spec and determined its epitope by cryoEM. New insights in postfusion specific binding and antigenic site I. Now published in ACS Infectious Diseases @pubs.acs.org. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... @xdh.bsky.social @hangryhobbit.bsky.social

Full article: Identification of β4GALNT2 as an anti-hPIV3 factor through genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 library screening. Nice work by former PhD student Xuesheng Wu. Many thanks to our collaborators!

We are happy this work by Sarah Peterl et al. is out in EMBO J! It was an exciting collaborative effort of several groups in the SFB1129 consortium on pathogen replication and spread. Check out the correlated light and scanning EM method to study virus morphology changes during spread!

www.cell.com/iscience/ful... Great work by Mengying Liu and others!

There's still time to submit your molecular biology abstracts to this year's #ESWI2025 meeting on #Influenza, #RSV and #SARSCoV2. The ESWI meetings are a brilliant way to see your work in context, as they consider these respiratory viruses all the way from molecular biology to policy...

Eurosurveillanc : Human infections with Eurasian avian-like swine influenza virus detected by coincidence via routine respiratory surveillance systems, the Netherlands, 2020 to 2023 Dirk Eggink et al www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2...

Excited to share our new @science.org paper! Led by postdocs Ruchao Peng and Xin Xu, we used cryo-EM/ET to reveal the influenza ribonucleoprotein complex structure and its strand-sliding mechanism for RNA synthesis, paving the way for new antivirals. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Also - we eradicated rinderpest in 2010 (joining smallpox as only diseases eradicated). Turns out fewer anti-vaxxers among cattle 🤦🏻‍♂️

Binding antibody titers against the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase correlate with protection against medically attended influenza A and B disease journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Saudi Arabia confirms 9 MERS cases, including hospital cluster www.cidrap.umn.edu/mers-cov/sau...

Next week I will move to the lab of Adolfo Garcia-Sastre at Mount Sinai for a three month sabbatical. Looking forward to meeting many old and new colleagues and friends and to visiting NYC itself!

Time for the Dutch Annual Virology Symposium, in the beautiful Geertekerk in Utrecht. Stoked to present our work on antibody sequencing 😁

Uganda’s Ebola Sudan outbreak appears stable No transmission has been found outside of a single chain, and eight patients in treatment are stable. www.cidrap.umn.edu/e... Photo: NIAID/Flickr cc

Do you like doing experiments on influenza virus particles but want them to be super-squeaky clean? Or perhaps you'd like to work with filamentous influenza virions but don't know how? Jack Hirst has the protocol chapter for you: link.springer.com/protocol/10....

Clear statement from the virology community

Deglycosylation and truncation in the neuraminidase stalk are functionally equivalent in enhancing the pathogenicity of a high pathogenicity avian influenza virus in chickens journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Structurally convergent antibodies derived from different vaccine strategies target the influenza virus HA anchor epitope with a subset of VH3 and VK3 genes www.nature.com/articles/s41...

With participation of Jimin Lee, Jack Brown, Risako Gen, @dabiophysicist.bsky.social, Cameron Stewart in our lab & in collaboration with the labs of Huan Yan and Tyler Starr www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Since the emergence of clade 2.3.4.4 H5 viruses, they have shown a remarkable ability to team up with other NA subtypes (and with N1 without a stalk deletion). This in contrast to the “old” H5. Presumably linked to changes in receptor binding. After N2, N6, and N8, we now find N9.

This is bad news. It suggests reassortment of circulating H5N1 viruses with viruses containing N9 NA. Although this indicates reassortment with avian viruses, it's still bad. Reassortment makes pandemics. The last 3/4 flu pandemics (and likely 1918 too) were reassortant viruses.

In recente dagen is weer een toename gezien in het aantal zieke en dode wilde vogels, vooral brandganzen, door hoog-pathogene vogelgriep. Het melden van dode vogels kan o.a. via de websites van het DWHC (dwhc.nl/meldingsform...) en Sovon (portal.sovon.nl/dood). www.sovon.nl/actueel/nieu...

Today we gathered over coffee and cake to thank Raoul de Groot for 40 years of service to the Utrecht Virology Lab 💐 Raoul is, quite literally, a giant in the coronavirus field, and we are extremely fortunate to work with him! 😄

Association of poultry vaccination with interspecies transmission and molecular evolution of H5 subtype avian influenza virus www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is a brand new type of H5N1 virus activity. My description of over 40 million migratory waterfowl and their poop blowing in the wind with H5N1 virus attached isn't appealing but it is exactly what is happening and we're going to see more human cases related to that.

H5N1 confirmed in more cats as probe into raw pet food widens www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influe...

SLC35A2 modulates paramyxovirus fusion events during infection journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Early career scientist in the field of respiratory virus infections: Check out these awards 👇🏼 Submit your application and join us at the ESWI conference in October in Valencia. Feel free to share 😀

Infection-induced lysine lactylation enables herpesvirus immune evasion www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#USDA confirmed 1 more California dairy herd infected with #H5N1 #birdflu, bringing the state's total to 707 and the national total to 924 herds in 16 states. 72% of California's dairy herds have been infected. www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po...

According to CDC's wastewater program, almost all wastewater sample sites in California, from San Diego in the south to Redding in the north, have tested positive for H5 bird flu.

1/ Our recent publication is online. We show that a clade 2.3.4.4b H5N1 virus attaches to, and replicates more efficiently in human respiratory epithelium than a clade 2.3.2.1 H5N1 virus that circulated in 2005. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Had a great time with several former Chinese colleagues and Berend Jan Bosch in Nanjing. Thanks Wentao for the invitation!

Influenza A virus-induced production of PI4P at the endoplasmic reticulum involves ATG16L1 and promotes the egress of viral ribonucleoproteins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.29.625996v1