New preprint from us! 🦠 Clinical metagenomics is great for sequencing pathogens directly from patient samples but for some protocols sensitivity for RNA viruses lags behind bacteria & fungi. We have shown why, and how to fix it. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Registration is now open for the first UK Virome Forum meeting! 📍 Advanced Research Centre (ARC), University of Glasgow 🗓️ 5-6 Oct 2026 🦠 Animal, human and environmental viromics For more info, including speakers, check bit.ly/ukvf-2026 or @ukvf.bsky.social Register for free: tinyurl.com/yhnartn5

📢 Registration is now open for the first UK Virome Forum meeting! This two-day event will bring together UK-based researchers using genomic approaches to study viromes. Whether you are investigating viral communities in soil 🌱, the human gut 🦠, or whales 🐋, this is your space!

Looking forward to hosting the UK viral community... community (🤦) in Glasgow in October! Further details, website and registration link to follow shortly! Keep an eye on our Bluesky for details 👀 🦠

Great to share my PhD work with the marine mammal folks at the European Cetacean Society meeting last week! 🐳 A really welcoming meeting - hope I get to do more marine mammal research so I can come back!🤞 If you haven't seen it already, paper published now at: doi.org/10.1111/mec.... #ECS2026

🌊 How do viruses circulate in marine mammals? New research from @matt-arnold-bio.bsky.social & colleagues explores viral communities across 15 species in Scotland, identifying 120+ viruses. Younger animals carry more, and sharing between species is common. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Want to work on viral community ecology and virus genomics? 🔎 🧬 🦠 Come and work with us at RVC! Applications for a 0.5 FTE lab technician role now open, suitable for someone with lab experience and a relevant BSc/MSc. jobs.rvc.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Wondering what happens if a seal sneezes on a whale? We were! 🦭🤧🐋 We sequenced viromes from 16 species of marine mammals stranded in Scotland. Of >100 viruses detected, ~10% appeared in multiple species (one in both seals & cetaceans!), mirroring known interspecies interactions in Scottish waters.

Excited to share my first paper! Co-circulating viruses in bats show diverse spatial movement patterns, perhaps due to different infection biology. Not all viruses move like their hosts, or like other viruses; Use them for inference with awareness and care!🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

5 more dairy cows tested positive for #H5N1 #birdflu antibodies on the Dutch farm where a previous cow tested positive. No surprise that if 1 was positive, others would be too. This dairy farm is the first outside the US to report H5N1 transmission. www-melkvee-nl.translate.goog/artikel/1450...

New preprint! We had a look at the codon and dinucleotide usage of rabies clades that circulate in specific host species, and found some interesting differences, particularly between carnivore- and bat-associated clades 👀 Coauthors on bluesky: @jdushoff.bsky.social @matt-arnold-bio.bsky.social

Luckily had a few minutes to do some stakeholder engagement before my talk at the @nhm.org today for the 1st birthday of @lien-london.bsky.social 🐋🐬 Thanks so much David, @roryjgibb.bsky.social and @jraghwani.bsky.social for organising and having me along. Looking forward to the next meeting!

Alongside other swingeing cuts to the CDC, Trump administration seems to be targeting EID journal 🫣 www.science.org/content/arti...

New paper! We estimated the reproductive timing of the critically endangered #flapperskate by making use of a pre-existing #citizenscience photo ID database 📸 with @davemarinebio.glasgow.ac.uk @jathorburn.bsky.social Paper ⏩ doi.org/10.1111/jfb.... & summary below ⏬

We (@SafeguardingResearch) need urgent help with archiving websites & datasets from NOAA: https://forum.safeguar.de/t/noaa-all-services-urgent/569 If you can contribute, please consider doing so. #noaa #safeguardingresearch #data #weather

A sunny first day in my new job at @royalvetcollege.bsky.social 🌞 I'll be here for the next couple of years working with @sarah-c-hill.bsky.social, @jraghwani.bsky.social, using (meta)genomic to understand viruses of wild and kept animals 🦠 🐟 weird fish viruses, here I come!

🎉PhDone!!*🎉 This week marks the end of 4 fab years at the University of Glasgow. Feel very fortunate to have worked with so many excellent people in @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk and @cvrinfo.bsky.social Papers on marine mammal viruses and modelling of host tropism incoming! 🐋 🦠 🦭 🧬 *apart from corrections 🙃