Differences in codon usage between host-species-specific rabies virus clades are driven by UpA and purine content https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.12.699068v1

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

Check out our new print that combines dense sequencing and phylodynamics to uncover a bunch of 😎 things about an understudied virus. - Doesn't evolve for 10 months a year ✅ - Uses some mossies for maintenance, others for spread ✅ - Established in Northeast for ~300 years ✅

Ötzi and a 45,000-year-old Siberian were both infected with a cancer-causing strain of HPV. This is fascinating, and a reminder that we have a vaccine that *prevents cancer* and everyone eligible should get it.

BBC News - Drones detect deadly virus in Arctic whales' breath www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... (it is, in case you're wondering, cetacean morbillivirus)

This is a really cool project, I was lucky to have the opportunity to participate. news.mcmaster.ca/mcmaster-res...

Amazing novel mpox recombination between epidemic clade 1 and 2 in returning traveller detected in UK: virological.org/t/inter-clad...

This is extremely rare and extremely awful. “The report said that organ donations are not routinely tested for rabies “because of its rarity in humans in the United States and the complexity of diagnostic testing.” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees! yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/ Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches. Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

is nothing safe from AI

The outbreak in Ethiopia is #Marburg virus, the first such outbreak for this country. 9 cases so far, including some health workers. x.com/drtedros/sta...

Update on the wild #polio discovery in Germany: The virus was found in wastewater in Hamburg. @rki.de, the German public health agency, says the virus sequence is very similar to some isolated in Afghanistan, so the likely source was an infected human. (page 10 here: www.rki.de/DE/Aktuelles...)

My 1st first-author paper is out as a preprint! Excited to share the fascinating story of marine-feeding vampire bats 🌊🦇 We found that marine-diet bats were exposed to #H5#AvianFlu 🦠 from marine wildlife and could potentially spread it to livestock via blood feed🩸 doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.09.686930

Regardless of fox’s actual rabies status. This is your reminder vaccinate for rabies. Always. Even if indoor only. The ONLY way to test for rabies is euthanize the animal and remove brain tissue. There is no live test for rabies and your state/local health department will not play

BREAKING: "The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has notified the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) that Canada no longer holds measles elimination status."

🚨 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...

Sarawak rabies update Sadly rabies continues there 😢 Now 80 deaths since 2017 “no record of any animal bite or scratch,“ but “handled the carcass of his pet dog in June” (CW: angry dog photo) 51-year-old man is Sarawak’s sixth rabies fatality for 2025 www.theborneopost.com/2025/10/28/5...

Oh heck no. Anti-vaccine disinformation is now making some owners refuse to vaccinate their pets against rabies.

Our paper on the phenomenon of persistence and latency in Ebola virus in an unobserved reservoir is finally out in preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The fact that the 6 L (leucine) codons come together to form an L should be interpreted as a sign that this is a good way to visualize the aa table. 🙂 8/8

Working with @rowandurrant.bsky.social on ways to visualize the amino-acid table and better understand viral evolution. We started with a two-by scheme for nucleotides (small square), where bond partners are horizontally adjacent and transition-connected nts are vertically adjacent. 1/8

Sequence data from the new Ebola outbreak in DRC suggests it is indeed a new spillover. And just incredible to see the virus sequenced and the data publicly shared less than 24 hours after confirmation of the outbreak. #IDsky 🧪 virological.org/t/the-16th-e...

Six deaths from rabies have been reported over the last 12 months in the U.S., the highest number in years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New study on scientific understanding in the US: Vaccines have mostly been a benefit to human health 69% Agree 20% Unsure 11% Disagree

🚨Our study on characterising the within-host SARS-CoV-2 evolution during persistent infections is now out in @lancetmicrobe.bsky.social! 👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

'The basic logic of the prion – a protein that can radically change its structure and function, and force that change onto other proteins too – may turn out to be so common that it ranks among the vital biological processes.' www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

We talked about this back when the first trial for lenacapavir first said the magic words everyone wants to hear, "halted for efficacy"(*), so a recap: this is not a vaccine or a treatment. It's PrEP aka "pre-exposure prophylaxis": you take the drug so if exposed to the virus, you will not catch it.

Characterisation of a persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection lasting more than 750 days in a person living with HIV: a genomic analysis www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

🦇 NEW RESEARCH: Our 3-year study of Australian flying foxes identified six co-circulating coronaviruses, with highest rates of infection and co-infection in young bats, and evidence of circulating recombinants 🧪🌏 🧵 Available open access in @natcomms.nature.com 📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🦇 Grooming rabies away A new study finds vampire bats can lick rabies vaccines off each other, spreading immunity through grooming. 88% of a colony was vaccinated in days. 🔗 www.science.org/content/arti... #SciComm #Zoonoses 🧪

What to do if you are bitten by a Bat? - copiously wash bite wound with soap and water for at least 15 minutes. - apply and antiseptic like betadine - seek medical care urgently- you will like be offered rabies post exposure prophylaxis including vaccination. bit.ly/3GBBsvy

Person dies of rabies in Yorkshire after contact with dog in Morocco

Grateful to see our work featured by @gavi.org. We highlight how we can set up smarter vaccine supply chains in the quest to eliminate human rabies. Read more: www.gavi.org/vaccineswork... The research: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #rabies #supplychains #vaccines

Absolutely thrilled to announce the launch of ARTIC2 - a £5.5M 5 year project funded by @wellcometrust.bsky.social to build on the ARTIC approach of low-cost, globally accessible genome sequencing for surveillance of outbreaks, epidemics and endemic diseases: www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/am...

Final version of our pseudovirus deep mutational scanning of rabies glycoprotein now published in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social: sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Main addition to preprint summarized above is additional validations of prefusion stabilization candidate mutations in Fig S4 and S5.

First confirmation of #WestNileVirus in mosquitoes in the UK, in an Aedes species. Risk to public still very low, but highlights huge importance of having robust mosquito surveillance and response programmes in place. @mosquitoscotland.bsky.social submit.forms.service.gov.uk/form/3652/re...

🚨We’re hiring a Postdoc to join our group at Oxford! We’re developing methods to understand how pathogens evolve—across hosts, over time, & through molecular & structural change. Keen or know someone who is? Please share! 🕒 3-year post 📅 Deadline: 30 May 🔗 Apply: www.jobs.ox.ac.uk/vacancy/179640

New paper on SARS-CoV-2 origins & timings accounting for recombination and similarities to the emergence of the first SARS virus 🦠

Does anyone have a copy of Beamer et al.'s "Resistance of the opossum to rabies virus" (American Journal of Veterinary Research, 1960)? #icanhazpdf

Uganda stopped a Sudan Ebola virus outbreak in under 3 months. No chaos. Just fast action, local leadership, and a rapidly implemented vaccine trial. Maybe the problem isn’t capacity in Africa after all—maybe it’s the story we keep telling about it. open.substack.com/pub/bktitanj...

Today’s my first day as a postdoc at McMaster University! Excited to be working here for the next year 🇨🇦

"Although lyssavirus infection was not completely cleared from the brains of treated animals, disease signs resolved and virus was maintained at a stable low level for at least 4 months post‐infection. Thus, this therapy appears to yield a functional cure for rabies in this animal model."

Fido and Fluffy need their rabies shots. Rabies shots protect all of us - humans, pets, and all the neighborhood wildlife - from a virus that's nearly 100% fatal. There's no "let's wait" on this one www.pbs.org/newshour/hea...

Recombination between positive-sense and negative-sense RNA viruses: journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Although the name 'monkeypox' comes from the virus's discovery in lab monkeys in 1958, researchers have long suspected rodents and other small mammals of being reservoir hosts https://go.nature.com/3R9pYRJ

The vaccine against Shingles helps protect against dementia, results of a natural experiment, adding to prior evidence "implications are profound" New @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41... nature.com/articles/s41...

Fascinating story and epidemiology. Good to read before mushroom hunting season starts around here www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

A Michigan resident who received a transplant in December died after having been infected with rabies from the new organ, the state health department says.

The UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer has confirmed a case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) in a single sheep in Yorkshire following repeat positive milk testing. To my knowledge, this is the first time the virus has been detected in sheep. www.gov.uk/government/n...