Very happy that Alaa Baazaoui's first first-authored paper is out. Using cryoEM we describe the Pol-II CTD binding site and observe a new arrangement of the flupol PB2. The structural work is nicely complemented by functional work. doi.org/10.1128/jvi.00…

Great to be back on the same stage Microbiology Society sharing the lab’s recent discoveries on our favourite influenza virus RNA polymerase! #microbio24

Huge congratulations to Dr Fangzheng Wang for passing his viva! Thank you Alex Borodavka and Nick Proudfoot for being the examiners! So…how many transfections was the DPhil worth?

Excited to share our work offering insights into how adaptive mutations enable avian influenza viruses to replicate their genome in mammalian cells Jonathan Grimes wendybarclay researchsquare.com/article/rs-371…

Happy to have contributed to this work. Tremendous structural work by Benoit. This work makes a lot pretty clear when it comes to host-adaptation. Very complementary and consistent to this pre-print from the Fodor and Grimes groups: researchsquare.com/article/rs-371…

Another great paper from the Cusack and Naffakh labs on influenza virus genome replication and host adaptation.

Ed Hutchinson discusses bird flu in cattle on Guardian Science

Massive congratulations to Dr Amanda Zihan Zhu for passing her DPhil viva! Thanks to Ed Hutchinson Hutchinson Lab and Nicole Robb for being the examiners and thanks to the llama for the influenza virus polymerase nanobodies!

This a post entirely devoted to thank my amazing examiners: Nicole Nicole Robb and Ed Hutchinson Lab who have drawn the perfect full stop to my DPhil journey. It was my greatest pleasure to have spent one of the most interesting and brain-stimulating 3 hours with you!!

🎇NEW PAPER🎇Happy to see our paper exploring phenuivirus cap-snatching published in Nucleic Acids Res (academic.oup.com/nar/article/do…), with contributions from the Maria Rosenthal lab Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Grünewald lab CSSB LIV, and Cusack lab EMBL Grenoble.

This is the end of the world as we know it, if this is reproducible! The new era of functional modeling has begun. I took a transcription factor with an unknown structure and folded it with its recognition sequence embedded in longer DNA. AlphaFold3 accurately positioned the

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 (and @DunnSchool.bsky.social) nature.com/articles/s4146…

Love this paper. Explains so many mutations which were mysterious until now.

Stephen Cusack, former Head of EMBL Grenoble, visiting professor at Dunn_School (and @DunnSchool.bsky.social) University of Oxford reflects on his early influences, his achievements, and the lessons he’s learned.

A physical model for M1-mediated influenza A virus assembly. A combination of #cryoEM and theoretical modelling from Julia Peukes and Serge Dmitrieff. Preprint here: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Congratulations Professor Hutchinson!

Insights into the workings of the Nipah virus RNA polymerase by Esra Balıkçı-Akıl Franziska Günl from the groups of Jonathan Grimes Fodor Laboratory at STRUBIOxford Dunn_School (and @DunnSchool.bsky.social).

Structural basis of influenza virus cap-snatching revealed!

A great opportunity for a virologist/immunologist to join a fantastic community of supportive colleagues dunnschool.bsky.social path.ox.ac.uk/vacancy/associ…

Virology—The next fifty years cell.com/cell/fulltext/…