Daniel Goldhill

A 3x3 grid of coloured images of influenza virus particles in the style of an Andy Warhol screen print. Image credit Naina Nair / Ed Hutchinson (MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research)

🚨New Influenza Tool🚨
Interested in IAV mutations?
Looking for markers of mammalian adaptation?
Frustrated by converting between IAV numbering systems?
The #Flu-MutationExplorer, a new tool from @cvrbioinfo.bsky.social and @royalvetcollege.bsky.social, is here to help:
flu-gdb.cvr.gla.ac.uk
(1/n)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
If your school is taking your child's class to the bat cave- do not sign the consent form!
Very cool supplemental video 1 showing potential spillover routes.

Ad for Postdoctoral Scientist Position in Burmeister Lab on Bacteria-Phage Coevolution. Full document available here: https://arburmeister.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/9/9/19990727/burmeister_lab_postdoc_position_2026.pdf

Postdoc position on phage-bacteria coevolution available in the @aburmeister.bsky.social lab at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee #phage #evosky #MicroSky #VirEvol 🦠 🔬 #microbiology

arburmeister.weebly.com/join-the-lab...

Help me out #MicroSky - what are your favourite microbial/viral genetics practical classes for undergraduates that can be run across just two sessions?

Melatonin gummies as sleep aids for children: What are the risks? To eliminate bedtime struggles, a growing number of parents have turned to melatonin gummies, but these hormone supplements are largely unregulated. Columnist Alice Klein digs into the evidence on the...

My jaw dropped at the first paragraph. By Alice Klein www.newscientist.com/article/2511...

A data figure showing a phylogenetic tree of H3N2 with 2025-K highlighted, the structure of the HA trimer with mutations characteristic of K highlighted, and box and whisker plots showing % neutralisation of the 2022 H3N2 vaccine strain, and of 2025 clade K, by various human antisera

🚨New Pre-Print🚨
Although H3N2 subclade K has multiple mutations in HA, neutralisation assays with pre-epidemic human sera show only moderate antigenic drift, and vaccines used in the 2024/2025 flu season induced cross-neutralising immunity
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Registration is open for the inaugural GRC conference in the Function of Evolving Systems. Aug 9-14, 2026, Waterville Valley. Truly stellar speaker lineup. Student/postdoc fellowships are available! Please come join us! www.grc.org/function-of-... @joybergelson.bsky.social

Excited about parasites? Love watching movies? Come join our Wellcome-funded project! Parasitology friends, please do share far and wide.

Regulatory hotspot on the influenza A virus polymerase revealed through the structure of the NEP-polymerase complex Structural studies reveal how influenza virus switches between making new RNA genomes and exporting them from the host nucleus.

Beautiful work from @efodor.bsky.social and Jonathan Grimes' labs - the first full structure of the influenza A virus NEP protein, and a clear indication that its role in viral replication is more nuanced that first thought
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Really excited our paper about how H5N1 rapidly adapted to cattle (and how these adaptations also increased its ability to infect cells from the human respiratory tract) is now published! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

CL3- Research Assistant The Pirbright Institute The Pirbright Institute delivers world-leading research to understand, predict, detect and respond to viral disease outbreaks. We study viruses of livestock that are endemic a...

Interested in high containment work on viruses?

We have an opening at the Pirbright Institute, working on high consequence viruses of livestock and humans in the core CL3 team.
isw.changeworknow.co.uk/pirbright/vm...

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... It's finally out! Meriam Guellil expertly led this project from the first HHV6 detection to the final paper. We found both human herpesviruses 6A and 6B in ancient remains going back 2500 years.

Here is what I think the research team to whom RFK Jr. just gave $1.6 million to do a randomized controlled trial of HepB vaccine in Guinea-Bissau is going to do.

Although the WHO recommendation is to administer the HepB vaccine at birth, infants in G-B usually get it at 6 weeks, not at birth.

I enjoyed reading this a lot!

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 🧪

Intracellular interactions shape antiviral resistance outcomes in poliovirus via eco-evolutionary feedback - Nature Ecology & Evolution A model of intrahost poliovirus replication shows that, after several rounds of replication, pocapavir, a poliovirus capsid inhibitor, collapses viral density, preventing intracellular interactions th...

My first lead author paper is out with Ben Kerr and @alisonfeder.bsky.social! We found that making an antiviral too strong can sometimes make resistance easier to evolve. This has implications for how we design drugs, choose doses, and think about viral evolution in the face of treatment. (1/n)

Finished a virology PhD or finishing soon? Check out this job - www.healthjobsuk.com/job/UK/Londo...

Ecology and spread of the North American H5N1 epizootic - Nature The panzootic of highly pathogenic H5N1 since 2021 was driven by around nine introductions into the Atlantic and Pacific flyways, followed by rapid dissemination through wild migratory birds, primaril...

Our lab's paper describing the North American H5N1 epizootic is out now in Nature! So thrilled to have this out, and congratulations to @lambod50.bsky.social for all the fantastic work on this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My 1st first-author paper is out as a preprint! Excited to share the fascinating story of marine-feeding vampire bats 🌊🦇 We found that marine-diet bats were exposed to #H5#AvianFlu 🦠 from marine wildlife and could potentially spread it to livestock via blood feed🩸
doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.09.686930

www.preprints.org?

Longitudinal analysis of influenza A virus deletion-containing viral genomes reveals key determinants of co-evolutionary dynamics and interference The substantial genetic diversity generated during influenza A virus replication facilitates both evasion of pre-existing host immunity and cross-species emergence. A major contributor to this diversi...

First big piece of research from our SG lab: Fadi's work with Chris Brooke's lab. Flu serially passaged 80X selects a defective genome with improved competition, but is nonviable as a full virus!
Notable improvement & safety for DVGs as antiviral RNA therapies!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A diagram depicting a PhD project whereby editing salmon cells or ova leads to viral resistance from ISAV.

If you are looking for a PhD in the UK, please check out the LIDo program - www.lido-dtp.ac.uk/apply.
If you are interested in viruses and making genetically edited salmon, please look up my icase project.
International students are welcome to apply!
Please reach out if you have questions.

Our new preprint is out 🥳🥳🥳

Henipaviruses, like Nipah and Hendra, package their genomes inside helical shells built by thousands of nucleoproteins. These nucleocapsids are essential to protect the viral RNA, but how do they ever let the polymerase in to read the sequence?

👇

Guys- new spillover route just dropped.

warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa...

I am advertising for a PhD position in my group. We'll be investigating how pathogenic RNA viruses replicate in the nucleus. The project will teach cryoEM/ET, virus culture, and in vitro assays.

If you're interested reach out and I'd be happy to have a chat.

UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

1/11

My stomach churned as I saw the news: it was my old Shul in my home city Emma Barnett’s shock at today’s terrorist attack was amplified when the presenter realised it had taken place where her family once worshipped

www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...

Quantifying viral load and characterizing virus diversity in wildlife samples with target enrichment sequencing Metagenomics is a powerful tool for characterizing viruses, with broad applications across diverse disciplines, from understanding the ecology and evolutionary history of viruses to identifying causat...

Excited to share that our paper on the relationship between viral load and metagenomic outputs in wildlife samples is now published in Microbial Genomics @microbiologysociety! 🎉 Fantastic collaboration with a brilliant team.

More info: 📖 tinyurl.com/ywb7tvjm

Near real-time data on the human neutralizing antibody landscape to influenza virus to inform vaccine-strain selection in September 2025 The hemagglutinin of human influenza virus evolves rapidly to erode neutralizing antibody immunity. Twice per year, new vaccine strains are selected with the goal of providing maximum protection again...

In new study led by @ckikawa.bsky.social, we provide near real-time data on human neutralizing antibody landscape to influenza by measuring ~26,000 titers to >100 recent viral strains

Data can inform vaccine selection & evolutionary/epidemiological modeling
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...