@andyrothstein.bsky.social
Senior Computational Biologist @ Ginkgo Biosecurity. Alum of UC Berkeley, WWU, & University of Vermont. he/him
Variations in annual dengue intensities are explained by temperature anomalies
Our new work led by Abbey Porzucek, @rafalpx.bsky.social, @colincarlson.bsky.social, Dan Weinberger to develop a method to compare relative dengue intensity between years and countries.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
Graph showing temperature anomaly and other covariates' effects on "RISc" score globally and by region
NEW!🦠🌡️ : What makes a "dengue year" like 2023-24? It's hard to pin down an answer unless you can homogenize out all the spatial variation and temporal trends. But once you do, the answer is pretty clean: dengue years are hot years.
Last one of the year (unless...?) 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
Hi everyone, I wanted to share some sad news about the future of the Verena program. As you know, in September, NSF delayed our annual payment indefinitely, and asked us to keep spending closer and closer to zero until they could “justify” another payment. We began to run out of funds at some universities this month, and will be fully spent out by late spring, so the goal was to get paid in December. We’ve been working with our program officer to make this happen, but sadly, we’ve learned we’re not getting an increment again, and there’s no clarity on when or how much we will be paid in the remainder of the grant (through September 1, 2027). Because of this, the Executive Committee has made the difficult decision to essentially shut the BII down until / unless something changes. What that means is an indefinite end to all programs (e.g., seminar), training activities (integration workshops, trainee corner), and evaluation. On research, what’s able to continue will have to be navigated by each investigator; our goal is to work together to push out all the impactful science we’ve spent three years collecting and analyzing data for, but we also know that priorities may shift around to keep people employed. If we’re lucky, Congress will pass a budget that lets us continue doing something like what we planned, and we’ll pick that back up when Zoe and Collin are back in April. Until then, Verena will continue to exist as a community where we can collaborate (and give and receive support!), and we’re working to find funding sources that can pick up from where the BII left off. On a personal note: it’s been the privilege of a lifetime to work with all of you, and an unbelievably lucky thing to get to run an NSF center in my 20s. I’ve loved this project, and I hope it’s made as much of a difference in your lives as it has in mine. In case I don’t see you later: happy holidays, be well, and so long and thanks for all the viruses. Best, Colin
Yesterday, we sent this message to the @viralemergence.org team, bringing a (hopefully temporary) end to our project three years into what started as a decade of planned work. /1
05.12.2025 14:30 — 👍 214 🔁 114 💬 11 📌 14Don't forget CDC TGS! BA.3.2 surveillance score is 3-0. Overall TGS 3 total: 1 from wastewater (which you mention linked) & 2 from asymptomatic traveler nasal swabs (GenBank: PV849885.1; PX641353.1) Earliest TGS from 6/2025.
bsky.app/profile/soli...
In under 24h following the newly identified outbreak of #Ebola in the DRC, the virus has been isolated, sequenced and the virus sequence data made publicly available.
virological.org/t/the-16th-e...
A few days ago we preprinted our Freyja 2 paper, describing the expansion of our original Freyja method to a real-time, multi-pathogen surveillance tool to track pathogen lineage prevalence and dynamics from sequencing of wastewater and other complex samples (like milk). 🧵
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
AGREE! I’ve said similar about Taco Bell’s innovation approach - love it! This is another great article on them: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
01.07.2025 22:22 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
The title of the paper: "A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance" - and an example data table
NEW! 🎉 We need wildlife disease surveillance to predict epidemics, but data sharing is rare - we found that only 2-3% of studies share raw data. So, we spent three years developing a data standard and R package to help get wildlife disease data into FAIR repositories. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
21.06.2025 15:17 — 👍 130 🔁 49 💬 3 📌 4
Top panels: graphs showing increases in spillover events, extinction rates, and temperature anomalies over the last few centuries. Bottom panel: a map of 10 pandemics since the year 1900. Four were linked to agriculture, two to wildlife use, and one to climate change.
🚨😷🧪 NEW: A growing body of evidence shows that pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change are part of a broader polycrisis - but there are no simple solutions. A sweeping overview of "Pathogens and planetary change" for the first issue of @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social, out now 🔓 rdcu.be/d6lHl
15.01.2025 14:16 — 👍 543 🔁 226 💬 17 📌 19
