Charlotte Houldcroft
@virologyhouldcroft.bsky.social
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Virology with a side-order of human evolution. Currently on maternity leave.
The last line...
about 20 hours ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge
2 days ago
🎉 Exciting news! 3 Department members have won
@erc.europa.eu
Synergy Grants: • Richard Durbin & Felipe Karam-Teixeira — studying metazoan genomes & transposable elements • Eva Paluch (PDN) & Daniel St Johnston — exploring epithelial cell robustness ➡️www.gen.cam.ac.uk/news/erc-synergy-grant-success
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Which preprint servers accept narrative reviews?
2 days ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Colin Carlson
4 days ago
🚨 NEW: The majority holder of the world's genetic sequence data is a bad actor who can cut off access to critics and competing services. We've tolerated this for years, and now it threatens the pandemic treaty. Time for WHO to step in. With
@ctrlalttim.com
:
www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/to-f...
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To Finish the Pandemic Agreement, WHO Needs a Trustworthy Viral Database | Think Global Health
Online platforms for sharing virus sequences are in disarray. The World Health Organization has a chance to build something new
https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/to-finish-the-pandemic-agreement-who-needs-a-trustworthy-viral-database
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Oh I do love being on the wrong side of the median journal review time metrics 🙃
6 days ago
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A short post-Halloween horror story: "We wanted to inform you that we have had a confirmed case of Impetigo in your child's room at nursery..."
6 days ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Stephen Schwartz
9 days ago
Here’s something really graphic for Halloween:
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Ed Hutchinson
9 days ago
Delighted to once again return to the lab to find there has been an outbreak of crafting. Happy Halloween to everyone!
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Charlotte Houldcroft
UK Health Security Agency
10 days ago
🆕
#UKHSAVirusWatch
: The latest flu, COVID-19 and RSV data from our weekly winter surveillance report. Flu has increased, particularly in children, and is now above baseline levels. This is an unusually early start to the influenza season Find the full report here:
https://bit.ly/3Lh27zJ
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Jacob Aron
10 days ago
New Scientist is looking for a new features editor, ideally with a specialism in evolution, ecology, human sciences and biology - if there's you, take a look!
www.dmgmedia.co.uk/careers/jobs...
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Features Editor (beat specialist) - dmg media
Features Editor (beat specialist) Location: New Scientist Headquarters – London Position: Full-time, permanent Salary: £40,000 to £43,000, depending on experience Workplace Type: Hybrid – 3 days ...
https://www.dmgmedia.co.uk/careers/jobs/features-editor-beat-specialist/?gh_jid=7364573
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Always fun when the word "unusually" turns up in a UKHSA doc: "influenza activity increased, particularly among children, and is now above baseline. This is an unusually early start of the influenza season."
www.gov.uk/government/s...
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National flu and COVID-19 surveillance report: 30 October 2025 (week 44)
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-2025-to-2026-season/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-report-30-october-2025-week-44
10 days ago
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What kind of animal leaves a permanent marker mixed in with the dry wipe pens?!
11 days ago
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Thanks to @CambridgeAfrica for funding a new study between the Department of Genetics and the University of Maiduguri, NG, to study respiratory virus epidemiology & genomic diversity in children!
11 days ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
11 days ago
The LSTM Future Leaders in Global Health Scholarship supports students enrolling on the MSc pathway in Global Health, starting January 2026. Find out how this scholarship could support your studies, check your eligibility, and learn how to apply by visiting
lstm.ac/futureleaders
.
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Adrian Liston
12 days ago
Pre-print alert! And this one really is a must read for anyone that does spectral
#flowcytometry
. It is a complete, fully-automated spectral unmixing pipeline that reduces error up to 9000-fold. Want to get a tough sample, like lung, looking like this? Read more!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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No hint from the UKHSA norovirus and rotavirus surveillance as to what the current stomach bug doing the rounds in England might be - norovirus and rotavirus are at typical lows for the time and year; norovirus only slightly up
www.gov.uk/government/s...
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National norovirus and rotavirus report, week 43 report: data to week 42 (data up to 19 October 2025)
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-norovirus-and-rotavirus-surveillance-reports-2025-to-2026-season/national-norovirus-and-rotavirus-report-week-43-report-data-to-week-42-data-up-to-19-october-2025
13 days ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Craig MacLean
13 days ago
New pre-print: Plasmid dependent phage effectively eliminate AMR bacteria and block plasmid transmission in the chicken gut microbiome Fun collaboration with Tao He lab (JAAS) and
@brockhurstlab.bsky.social
lab (Manchester)
#phagesky#microsky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Plasmid dependent phage eliminate pathogenic bacteria and antibiotic resistance plasmids from the chicken gut microbiome
Conjugative plasmids are a key reservoir of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in commensal and pathogenic bacteria within the gut microbiome. Plasmid-dependent phage (PDPs) are a promising therapeutic op...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.26.684609v1.full.pdf+html
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Kai Kupferschmidt
16 days ago
In the past 2 weeks several European countries have reported locally acquired cases of
#mpox
clade Ib. This is new. There had been patients before but those infections likely happened elsewhere. Now it looks like mpox Ib is spreading here in the sexual networks of men who have sex with men.
#IDsky
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Azenta-Genewiz - currently wiping the floor with Sigma, IDT and especially ThermoFisher for qPCR dual labelled probes. £85 versus £350 (Genewiz vs Thermo). It pays to shop around...
16 days ago
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Surely someone in the UK is doing enteric virus surveillance and publishing the results? I want to know about more than just noro and rota.
17 days ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
GfV - Gesellschaft für Virologie
18 days ago
Pet rats carry viruses that cause serious diseases (HMB) 👇
add a skeleton here at some point
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Charlotte Houldcroft
James Chalmers
20 days ago
This remains the funniest way to hear about an internet outage, though.
add a skeleton here at some point
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Another kitome paper: discovering new viruses is hard when there are viruses in the extraction columns! Controls so important...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
20 days ago
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Hive mind, any idea what gastroenteritis bug is doing the rounds in the UK this week? Adults rather than kiddies...
23 days ago
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🎯 I scored 6/10 on
#DiscoverOrMDPI
— can you beat me?
pagoba.shinyapps.io/publi_guess/
,
#ResearchIntegrity
#ScientificPublishing
#AcademicSky
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Each round, you'll see the name of a journal.
https://pagoba.shinyapps.io/publi_guess/
23 days ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Gemma Langridge
24 days ago
🚨 Funded PhD alert 🚨 We are recruiting for a PhD student to join the
@langridgelab.bsky.social
in October 2026 - please share! If you like bacteria, genomics and puzzles, this could be the project for you 🦠🧬🧩 Apply by 2 Dec 🗓️
#PhDposition
Find out more ⬇️
www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...
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Continuously reminded, on looking back at my HLA type, how boring it is - commonest UK allele at pretty much every loci! A local HLA type for local people...
25 days ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Marc Veldhoen
26 days ago
Truly bizarre how a bunch of non-specialists club together under the cosplay banner of the WHN, and push out anti-science pulp.
@ajpmonline.bsky.social
@ajpmfocus.bsky.social
Comparing SARS-CoV-2 with HIV and COVID-19 with AIDS is bizarre, false and harmful. 1/8
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I suppose I should be glad that this year's round of hand foot and mouth disease had been systemically mild for me and relatively so for the toddler (who actually was more classically affected last year, but cheerful, whereas I felt like death...)
28 days ago
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www.science.org/content/arti...
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When women researchers publish, media attention doesn’t always follow
Men-led papers receive more media coverage than women’s, new study finds
https://www.science.org/content/article/when-women-researchers-publish-media-attention-doesn-t-always-follow
about 1 month ago
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Someone in the US has a beautiful system for wastewater metagenomics for pathogens and they do things like monitor cryptic SC2 lineages being shed in NYC and I *can't find it* - can anyone help?
about 1 month ago
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Emma Davies did her third year undergraduate project in the lab I was working in (Team Wills!) and she was obviously on her way to great things in virology. Her upwards trajectory continues!
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Microbiology Society
about 1 month ago
Huge congratulations to Emma Davis, the winner of 2025's Early Career Microbiologist of the Year prize! We agree with Emma that all of the finalists' talks were brilliant and a massive well done to everyone involved!
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Does anyone know of any software for genotyping adenovirus directly from a FASTA, without making phylogenies?
about 1 month ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Sean T. Collins
about 1 month ago
CHATGPT: I understand where you're coming from. You worked really hard to get here, and now it's time to enjoy the fruit of your labors. ISILDUR: So I should keep it? Elrond says I shouldn't CHATGPT: The ring is precious. Sometimes friends don't have your best interests at heart. ISILDUR: true
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Can someone at the BBC please pay me to write a news piece about common cold cases rising? It'll be evergreen, they can trot it out every September, I can even predict what day to publish it based on when English schools go back...
www.gov.uk/government/s...
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National flu and COVID-19 surveillance report: 25 September 2025 (week 39)
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-2025-to-2026-season/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-report-25-september-2025-week-39
about 1 month ago
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I know the letters are hard to pronounce, BBC, but no one serious is ACTUALLY calling them Nimbus and Stratus, stop pandering to the silly naming!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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Covid cases rising with new variants 'Nimbus' and 'Stratus'
Unwell with a bad throat and temperature? You may have one of the new Covid strains circulating this autumn.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rv3y9jnryo
about 1 month ago
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One paper in revision. Two papers under review. What's the betting they all end up back on my desk at the same time?
#AcademiaSky
#MicroSky
#VirologySky
about 1 month ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌
about 1 month ago
🤷🏽♀️ Yet another way LLMs damage the social fabric
hbr.org/2025/09/ai-g...
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ictv.global/report/chapter/adenoviridae/adenoviridae/mastadenovirus
Mastadenovirus blackbeardi - really?
about 1 month ago
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Did a cat write this?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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Ratmageddon: Why rats are overrunning our cities
Rats are multiplying at speed in urban areas. So, what's really behind the boom - and is it now unstoppable?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gvk397j80o
about 1 month ago
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Biolegend are so cheap for some reagents, I wonder if they are using them as loss leaders, or else other companies are just price-gouging [I am a big fan of Biolegend antibodies, it doesn't seem they reduce costs by reducing quality...]
about 2 months ago
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As a UK onlooker, I am quite confused: has the USA changed its childhood vaccination schedule, or recommendations, and if so is there a guide anywhere to the changes?
about 2 months ago
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Charlotte Houldcroft
Randall Munroe
8 months ago
Lungfish
xkcd.com/3064
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I see the anonymous 'ministers' want to tinker with how UK universities work ('increased specialisation' rather defeats the point of being a university...). I collaborate with departments of Medicine, Archaeology, Pathology and Zoology.
about 2 months ago
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Think I've just experienced my first peer review by ChatGPT - seems to include a hallucinated reference.
about 2 months ago
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Everything has a cost:
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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Disposable face masks used during Covid have left chemical timebomb, research suggests
An estimated 129bn were being used every month around the world at height of pandemic, with no recycling stream
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/08/disposable-face-masks-covid-chemical-timebomb?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb
about 2 months ago
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Strong stock photo from Healio
about 2 months ago
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doi.org/10.1016/j.im...
"B cell dysregulation during acute COVID-19 is transient" by Jokiranta et al.
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Redirecting
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imlet.2025.107086
2 months ago
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Does anyone have experience of how long the wait is for presubmission enquiries to Clinical Microbiology Reviews?
#MicroSky
#VirologySky
2 months ago
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