How do #pathogens become more virulent? Read on for a tale of #ancient bones, #ancientDNA, and a very modern danger in the chicken industry… 🧵1/14

Delighted to be giving the first ウイルス学若手ネットワーク journal club! I'll be talking about a cool evolutionary arms race story between SARS-CoVs and bat immune systems I worked on with Wilson Lab during our time at the MRC-Uni of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research! This Wed, 7pm Japan time, register below ⬇⬇⬇

【Please RT】Excited to share our new research in bioRxiv! We here developed CoVFit, a protein language model predicting the fitness (transmissibility) of SARS-CoV-2 variants from the S protein sequence. 1/n biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Curious about many of the cell intrinsic blocks to infection of lentiviruses in our cells? We wrote a (fairly comprehensive) review to help guide you through on this decades-long literature dive. (credit to UW Ph.D. student Joy who did much of the heavy lifting here)

Structures of H5N1 influenza A virus polymerase with human ANP32B reveal mechanisms of replication and host adaptation. Great collaboration with Jonathan Grimes and wendybarclay labs led by Loic Carrique STRUBIOxford and @EccoStaller Dunn_School (now @DunnSchool.bsky.social) nature.com/articles/s4146…

RSV kills 20-30 babies in the UK every year and even milder cases are just miserable, as I know from 2x very sick babies of my own 😢 So great to hear that from 1st September, the UK will be offering an RSV vaccine in pregnancy to protect newborns! 🥳 gov.uk/government/pub…

#SAMD9L is an antiviral factor against #HIV & primate lentiviruses, inhibiting viral & cell translation Thrilled our findings led by Alexandre Legrand found such a great home PLOS Biology ! CIRI Lyon CNRS Biologie Inserm @ENSdeLyon Université de Lyon journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar… (1/3)

Just stopping by your timeline in case you didn’t know that the Chief Science Advisors for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States - are all women 🔥

It’s fair season, so before you and your family head to an agricultural fair, learn the actions you can take to keep everyone healthy and protected against #H5N1 #birdflu. More here: bit.ly/4czA2wz

New paper out nature - why are males more vulnerable to severe infections (ex acute #COVID), while females suffer more from autoimmunity (SLE, MS etc and also #LongCovid)? sex chromosomes or hormones? Here we studied adaptation of human immune systems to gender-affirming

Really incredible work, high-risk viruses are already circulating in wild and farm animals, including CoVs. This underscores the importance of pandemic preparedness research to stop future naturally occurring pandemics. 👇 nature.com/articles/s4158…

🎉Huge congrats to the winners from last weeks #DOMResesrchDay2024 who picked up prizes for best Poster, Flash Talk and Oral presentations by PhD students and postdocs! L-R: Johanna Jung, Matthew Yip, Jordi Lambert, Grace West, David Lindsay & Despina Giakomidi

WHO report about the role of vaccines in reducing antimicrobial resistance. The estimates for #RSV: globally, 3.9 mi. pathogen-associated antibiotic use would be averted if preventive strategy targeting RSV protection in infants who.int/publications/i…

In the latest issue! Co-opting templated aggregation to degrade pathogenic tau assemblies and improve motor function dlvr.it/TFY66F

Do you think you've had long-term GI problems since having Covid? We are performing a study examining the characteristics of viruses, specifically persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections, in stool samples. 1/3

To get 2025 off to a good start, I'm delighted to share with you our study published today in Nature Microbiology 🎉 We studied the ability of the receptor-binding proteins (RBP) of >100 animal viruses to mediate entry into human cells. A short thread below. nature.com/articles/s4156…

This particular myth winds me up, and I know Aris Katzourakis shares my pain...! youtu.be/B_efnqnZ-yI

Our next KIER (Knowledge, Inclusion and Equity in Research) book club will be on the 28th February, where we'll be discussing Medical Apartheid, a book about the non-consensual use of African American people in medical research You only get cake if you attend!

"A new film about the origins of Covid-19 tells how rightwing conspiracy theorists pushed the lab-leak theory to their own ends, suppressing the work of real scientists" observer.co.uk/culture/articl…