@alisonfeder.bsky.social
Rapid evolutionary dynamics in viruses, cancer and bacteria. Assistant professor at UW Genome Sciences and Freeman Hrabowski Scholar at HHMI. federlab.github.io
Poster reads: G.S. happy hour sponsored by the queitsch/cuperus right after research reports. picture of corn on juliet-style balcony
poster reads G.S. happy hour queitsch/cuperus lab edition right after research reports. Features three pictures of corn
Are you coming for happy hour, @jrossibarra.bsky.social?
23.01.2026 01:10 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Postdoc Position in Virology (1yr, renewable) We are launching M+RVL, a new research group dedicated to better understanding the fundamental mechanisms of positive-strand RNA virus replication. Supported by the LabEx NetRNA research cluster, the team is based within the Mosquito Models of Innate Immunity (M3I) unit at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMC) in Strasbourg, France. Strasbourg is a lively city in northeastern France that offers a high quality of life, a vibrant university system, and a historic city center at the heart of Europe. Research Focus Replication organelles (ROs) are membrane-bound compartments that drive genome replication in positive-strand RNA viruses. Mosquito-borne viruses must assemble ROs in both mosquito and vertebrate hosts, which are separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. While structural biology has revealed the architecture of ROs in human cells, structure alone cannot explain their assembly, dynamics, and host-specific interactions, highlighting the need for integrative approaches. To address this gap, M+RVL integrates high-throughput genetics, proteomics, and computational modeling to dissect the mechanisms governing RO formation and function across hosts. Research Leadership The group is led by William Bakhache, Ph.D. Essential Skills: Strong background in virology, molecular biology, and biochemistry techniques. Desired Experience: Experience handling BSL-3 pathogens; expertise in computational biology (e.g., NGS analysis, proteomics data analysis, structural modeling). How to Apply Please send a single PDF containing a cover letter (detailing past and future research interests), a CV, and contact information for two references to williambakhache@hotmail.com.
Post-doc job alert! Please share with anyone who might be interested! @amersocvirology.bsky.social #virology #virosky #evolution
08.01.2026 22:56 — 👍 7 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
Excited that SpaceBar is now out in Nature Methods!🥳
We combined clone tracing with spatial transcriptomics to untangle what drives gene expression in tumors: a cell's identity or its neighborhood?
Most genes were driven by location, but some showed strong clonal patterns.
rdcu.be/eVhpc
Amazing work, Ricky!!
17.12.2025 21:22 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0If you are interested in this work and are looking for a postdoc position, please get in touch -- we are actively looking for someone to join our group at UCLA!
17.12.2025 18:53 — 👍 14 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0Amazing work, @rwolff.bsky.social and @nanditagarud.bsky.social!!!
17.12.2025 21:14 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Grateful to share our paper on gene-specific selective sweeps in human gut microbiomes, now out in Nature! It has been a joy to work with @rwolff.bsky.social, whose insights and hard work made this possible.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thanks so much, Asher! The project was much enriched by conversations I had at your sociovirology meeting in Puerto Rico!
15.12.2025 17:07 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Very cool work.
Intracellular interactions shape antiviral resistance outcomes in poliovirus via eco-evolutionary feedback
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Over the past 5+ years I've had the honor of working with @wsdewitt.github.io @victora.bsky.social and many others on a project to "replay" affinity maturation evolution from a fixed starting point.
matsen.group/general/2025...
So much fun to work with Alex and Ben Kerr on this project, and to wade deeper into this exciting field of sociovirology. #socialviruses
We're also grateful for great suggestions from two anonymous reviewers during peer review.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Please check out the paper for our full results, and this nice press release put out by @uwnews.uw.edu!
newsroom.uw.edu/news-release...
This parallels ongoing work in the treatment of cancers and bacteria showing that competitive inhibition and ecological interaction mediated by drug dosing can improve population control.
10.12.2025 21:07 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Understanding this feedback could allow us to design more evolution-proof therapies by maintaining therapeutically useful social interactions over time.
@alexrob.bsky.social finds that neutralizing fewer viruses with weaker drugs can paradoxically lead to less resistance and lower viral loads.
The point is much broader than poliovirus and pocapavir: if we're trying to design therapeutics that exploit social interactions between viruses, we need to account for the effects of therapeutic success in diminishing those interactions.
bsky.app/profile/alex...
Top: Label: High density. Image: multiple sensitive and resistant genomes coinfect cells and produce hybrid capsids with resistant and sensitive subunits which mostly fail to pass through a selective screen. Bottom: Label: Low density. Image: single sensitive and resistant genomes in cells and produce fully resistant or sensitive capsids. Fully resistant genomes pass successfully through a selective screen.
The answer? Sometimes! The key variable is the density of the viral population. When viruses coinfect often, interference is effective at arresting resistance evolution.
BUT, if the drug works well, it reduces viral density, ultimately allowing resistance to escape this interference.
In theory, this means that sus viruses should prevent resistance from spreading intra-host while it's rare.
Does it work? @alexrob.bsky.social built a poliovirus replication model to probe the impact of intra-cellular resource sharing, and validated it against experimental and clinical data.
Pocapavir binds an oligomeric poliovirus capsid composed of 60 subunits.
Mutations can change this subunit's shape and prevent binding. However, if capsids contain both susceptible AND resistant subunits, drug can bind anyway.
As a result, sus viruses can sensitize res ones when they share a cell.
So excited to share this work led by @alexrob.bsky.social with Ben Kerr!
We investigated a poliovirus capsid inhibitor that exploits a breakdown in the genotype-phenotype map to prevent drug resistance evolution. Or does it?
See Alex's thread, but a few extras:
#socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪
It was great to write a brief commentary with @sociovirology.bsky.social on @nanamikubota.bsky.social and @vscooper.micropopbio.org's recent discovery of cheat-driven cycles in Pseudomonas (www.cell.com/current-biol... - amazing example of the tragedy of the commons!
🧪 #socialviruses #evosky
Hi everyone! I'm co-organizing this retreat/workshop June 15-19 for those looking to get started in mathematical/computational modeling of biological processes. Location is a beautiful farm in NC. Please share with students and others who want to build modeling skills. Interdisciplinarity welcome!
02.12.2025 19:00 — 👍 46 🔁 26 💬 1 📌 2
The world is a few steps closer to a cure for #HIV, a hopeful sign illuminated by two studies published Monday featuring work from Fred Hutch's Lillian Cohn, Daniel Reeves and others. #WorldAIDSDay https://bit.ly/44JxZ6X
01.12.2025 23:34 — 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0Really enjoying reading your updates/highlights from the meeting! Thanks for posting!
29.10.2025 21:53 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT
15.10.2025 15:53 — 👍 162 🔁 210 💬 1 📌 5Happy to have started as an @hhmi.org Freeman Hrabowski Scholar! Incredibly grateful for this opportunity and am excited for some very cool new directions! We are *HIRING*, especially postdocs! Please reach out if you’re interested in uterine and pregnancy biology. Please repost!
09.10.2025 19:42 — 👍 40 🔁 16 💬 0 📌 1There are a bunch of other really exciting projects that aren’t in preprint form yet that I’m looking forward to sharing with the world too, so stay tuned!
I'm grateful to get to come to lab each day and work with these brilliant people on interesting problems!
Hunter Colegrove extends a model of epithelial homoeostasis to investigate how mucosal gene therapy could be used to prevent the spread of pathogenic mutations in people with Fanconi anemia (with Ray Monnat)!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Yingnan Gao has a major overhaul on his paper investigating how to detect selection in lineage tracing data using tree balance statistics! #evoSky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Sam Hart describes and applies a method to distinguish differences in mutational processes between groups of cancers without signature decomposition (joint work with @kelleyharris.bsky.social and in collaboration with @nalcala.bsky.social )! #Genomics 🖥️ 🧬
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Alex Robertson @alexrob.bsky.social has some very exciting new results describing when and how intracellular interactions among polioviruses can slow resistance evolution (with Ben Kerr)!: #VirEvol #evoSky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
