Our discovery of novel viruses in invasive camelids in Australia leads us to propose a simple idea: RNA viruses may repeatedly evolve functional modules at the 5′ end of their genomes. #Virology #RNAvirus #VirusEvolution #Picornavirus #VirusDiscovery doi.org/10.64898/202...

Phionah Tushabe was the winner of our poster prize! Her study used metagenomics to identify viruses in stool of patients with non-polio acute flaccid paralysis. She not only had a beautiful poster but did a fantastic job of presenting her project. We can’t wait to see her work in the future!

Day 4 of the metagenomic virus discovery workshop is all about phylogenetics and virus evolution! Thanks to Eduan Wilkinson, Jackie Mahar and @spyroslytras.bsky.social @ceri-news.bsky.social

This morning we’re starting bright and early with a hands on tutorial in handling large sequencing output and designing a virus discovery pipeline

The advanced metagenomics for virus discovery workshop is underway in South Africa. Participants from 20 countries, global South such as Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, and Ghana, collaborating with expert teams from CERI, Karolinska Institutet, Germany, Australia, Japan

Today, we start one of the most advanced virus discovery & metagenomics workshop in the world in Stellenbosch. Experts from Australia, America, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Italy, Nederlands, Japan, U.K and Sweden come together to teach participants from 20 countries.

Day 1 of the metagenomic virus discovery workshop is underway with lectures on project planning. Fantastic to have teachers and participants from 20 countries here together in Stellenbosch

The Metagenomic Virus Discovery workshop kicks off bright and early on Monday morning in gorgeous Stellenbosch, South Africa. We hope our participants are ready for a week packed full of insightful lecture and practical sessions with our panel of experts from around the world

Join us in the Neeslie Cinema, Stellenbosch University, on Wednesday 19th November at 14:00GMT (16:00 SAST) for the MVD workshop keynote. We have two fantastic talks from Dr Maja Vukovikj from Uppsala university, Sweden and Dr Erik Karlsson from Insitut Pasteur, Cambodia tinyurl.com/ytj3sppm

Just over one month until we welcome our teachers and participants from all around the world to beautiful Stellenbosch, South Africa, for five days of hands on metagenomic virus discovery sessions

Research assistant + postdoc position on a NERC funded project working w @darrenobbard.bsky.social and collaborating with @savebutterflies.bsky.social on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of the virome of UK moths @uniexecec.bsky.social. Descriptions below and links here benlongdon.com/join/

Just under 6 weeks until the metagenomic virus discovery workshop kicks off in Stellenbosch, South Africa. We're excited to be bringing together a fantastic group of speakers and teachers with expertise in all aspects of virus discovery from around the world.

✨ #MicroSeq2025 Plenary Highlight! ✨ Dr Jackie Mahar is an evolutionary virologist & bioinformatician based at CSIRO, managing projects on NGS-based phylogenomics of zoonotic & animal viruses for pathogen discovery, surveillance & viral ecology. Register👇 trybooking.com/events/landing/1424679

📣Calling Australian/NZ ECRs and PhD Students 📣 Abstract submission and registration for MicroSeq2025 opens July 21! Abstracts for both medium-length and lightning talks will be welcome.

Got a great idea for a metagenomic virus discovery project but not sure what to do next? We are running a 5 day hands on workshop in beautiful Stellenbosch, South Africa with experts from around the world. Applications are open until 31st July. climade.health/2025/06/22/m...

Interested in metagenomic virus discovery but don't know where to start? In collaboration with CERI and a group of virus discovery experts from around the world, we'll be running a 5 day hands-on workshop in virus discovery. Find out more here: climade.health/2025/06/22/m...

I’m so excited to finally have this work published. Fantastic work from @julienmelade.bsky.social culturing a virus identified through metagenomic virus discovery methods

I'm thinking of organising a meeting on endogenous viral elements (RNA, DNA and retroviral) - if you'd potentially be interested, please fill out the form here - forms.gle/wrCiWMw4yXZe... - so I can gauge interest. Please RT or share with anyone maybe interested! 🧪🧬🖥️🦠 #virology #bioinformatics

After just short of nine years in the Holmes group, it’s come time for me to move on and stop spending Eddie’s money. I’ve had an incredible time working with everything from Antarctic ticks to Brazilian bird poo. But I’m excited to be starting a Humboldt fellowship and joining FLI in Germany

We would love feedback on a new NCBI-BLAST service we are launching today: sky-blast.com Under the hood it's the same BLAST executable and databases provided by NCBI, with a replica of the NIH's interface - providing an alternative to the US gov service that's less congested, faster & more reliable

The first measles death in the US in a decade -- the tragic, preventable death of a child whose parents chose not to protect them with vaccination -- should spark an immediate nation-wide campaign to ensure all children are protected against preventable diseases. Anything less is unconscionable.

I know all the headlines about the recent Japanese Encephalitis death in NSW state “a man from Sydney” but please keep in mind that there is currently no evidence the virus is active in mosquitoes along the east coast (inc. Sydney). https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/20250225_01.aspx

The abstract submission & registration for #RdRpSummit2025 is NOW OPEN!!! 🎉🙌 Do you work on RNA virus discovery using RdRps? Are you joining the #ViBioM2025 in Portugal? Consider submitting your research in one of our sessions! More info: RdRp.io

🚨👨🏽‍🔬👩🏿‍🔬𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁! Work with us to develop supervised learning and graph analysis of the evolutionary and genomic links between viruses, the tissues they can infect, and the hosts that can be infected. 3y role based at @cvrinfo.bsky.social, apply by 18 Mar: vibelab.co.uk/blog/25-02-1...

Who appointed the ICTV or its members and gave them authority? Taxonomy should facilitate clear and accurate communications. For many viral Families constantly changing names (not just binomials) have consistently created confusion - and been largely ignored by workers in the field.

Turns out that metatranscriptomic sequencing of animal gut contains can identify exotic plant viruses that are biosecurity threats. Work led by Jackie Mahar and Solomon Maina. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Now @erinharvey.bsky.social is taking us through increasingly weird viruses in increasingly weird marsupials. Tassie devils, antechinus, numbats, oh my! #AVS12

Im always excited for a chance to talk about marsupials 🦘

We love hearing about weird viruses with @marypetrone.bsky.social to wake us up for the last day of #AVS

A great intro to our work on a crazy Tassie devil virus from @julienmelade.bsky.social in the #AVS science bites session. Find out more at poster 102 this evening

A fantastic talk on RNA virus diversity in Australian soil from our dirt queen and master of giant trees @royalfizzbin.bsky.social #AVS

@julienmelade.bsky.social and I are so excited to present our work on Tassie devil viruses at AVS this week that we went and found one

Very excited to have this preprint out! Combining the wild world of virus discovery in Australian marsupials with cell culture to establish host association. After identifying the first mammalian associated jingchuvirus in SRA data we can now establish that it really is infecting the tassie devil

A fantastic paper by Vince Costa looking at how host adaptive radiation impacts virus evolution authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

We saw a record number of young goannas out at the farm near Mudgee this year. We guess this is a result of the mouse plague a few years ago? We always had a few old adults that would come to see what we were up to but this year we had 6-7 young fellas. Some were pretty aggressive too

Holmes lab second annual(?) writing retreat kicking off with gorgeous weather in the central coast. Thanks to the boss man. I promise we’ll be smashing out papers after this 👩‍💻

So happy to have this neat little paper out. We screened all Dasyurid RNA-seq libraries available in the SRA database and identified evidence of 15 novel viruses including what could be the first detection of a chu-like virus in mammals academic.oup.com/ve/article/9...