Dr. Rowan Durrant

🚨Our study on characterising the within-host SARS-CoV-2 evolution during persistent infections is now out in @lancetmicrobe.bsky.social!
👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Stephen Buranyi · Folding and Unfolding: Protein to Prion How and why do proteins, which are produced by our body to build structures (such as skin and muscle) or carry out tasks...

'The basic logic of the prion – a protein that can radically change its structure and function, and force that change onto other proteins too – may turn out to be so common that it ranks among the vital biological processes.'
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

We talked about this back when the first trial for lenacapavir first said the magic words everyone wants to hear, "halted for efficacy"(*), so a recap: this is not a vaccine or a treatment. It's PrEP aka "pre-exposure prophylaxis": you take the drug so if exposed to the virus, you will not catch it.

Characterisation of a persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection lasting more than 750 days in a person living with HIV: a genomic analysis Convergent SARS-CoV-2 evolution, both in and outside the spike protein, observed in this study suggests parallels with the evolutionary process leading to emergence of the omicron VOC. The inferred ab...

Characterisation of a persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection lasting more than 750 days in a person living with HIV: a genomic analysis www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Synchronized seasonal excretion of multiple coronaviruses coincides with high rates of coinfection in immature bats - Nature Communications Bats harbor diverse coronaviruses but temporal dynamics are less well studied. Here, the authors analyzed coronaviruses in Australian flying foxes over 3 years showing peak shedding and co-infections ...

🦇 NEW RESEARCH: Our 3-year study of Australian flying foxes identified six co-circulating coronaviruses, with highest rates of infection and co-infection in young bats, and evidence of circulating recombinants 🧪🌏 🧵

Available open access in @natcomms.nature.com

📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Vampire bats’ mutual grooming helps spread innovative rabies vaccine A gel that bats lick off one another’s fur could help prevent rabies outbreaks in cattle, a growing problem in Latin America

🦇 Grooming rabies away

A new study finds vampire bats can lick rabies vaccines off each other, spreading immunity through grooming. 88% of a colony was vaccinated in days.

🔗 www.science.org/content/arti...

#SciComm #Zoonoses 🧪

Lyssavirus is rare, but deadly. What should you do if a bat bites you? A man in Australia has died after being infected with bat lyssavirus. Here’s what to know about this infection.

What to do if you are bitten by a Bat?
- copiously wash bite wound with soap and water for at least 15 minutes.
- apply and antiseptic like betadine
- seek medical care urgently- you will like be offered rabies post exposure prophylaxis including vaccination.

bit.ly/3GBBsvy

Person dies of rabies in Yorkshire after contact with dog in Morocco UK Health Security Agency says person had contact with stray animal while on holiday in north Africa A person has died in Yorkshire from rabies after contact with a stray dog while on holiday in Morocco, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said. More details soon … Continue reading...

Person dies of rabies in Yorkshire after contact with dog in Morocco

Grateful to see our work featured by @gavi.org. We highlight how we can set up smarter vaccine supply chains in the quest to eliminate human rabies.

Read more: www.gavi.org/vaccineswork...

The research: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#rabies #supplychains #vaccines

Ambitious project to develop low-cost genome sequencing for pathogens known and unknown - University of Birmingham Project will build on research that helped diagnostic labs to adopt sequencing capacity for COVID-19 and permit characterisation of future infectious threats

Absolutely thrilled to announce the launch of ARTIC2 - a £5.5M 5 year project funded by @wellcometrust.bsky.social to build on the ARTIC approach of low-cost, globally accessible genome sequencing for surveillance of outbreaks, epidemics and endemic diseases: www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/am...

Deep mutational scanning of rabies glycoprotein defines mutational constraint and antibody-escape mutations Rabies virus causes nearly 60,000 human deaths annually. Antibodies that target the rabies glycoprotein (G) are being developed as post-exposure proph…

Final version of our pseudovirus deep mutational scanning of rabies glycoprotein now published in
@cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Main addition to preprint summarized above is additional validations of prefusion stabilization candidate mutations in Fig S4 and S5.

First confirmation of #WestNileVirus in mosquitoes in the UK, in an Aedes species. Risk to public still very low, but highlights huge importance of having robust mosquito surveillance and response programmes in place.
@mosquitoscotland.bsky.social

submit.forms.service.gov.uk/form/3652/re...

*oops it actually wasn't this paper but another one I had been hunting for with a known title- but still, incredible

Okay this is absolutely magical, I've been hunting for a paper (only knowing the author's name, journal and year, no title) for hours and received a pdf back within *5 minutes* of putting in an interlibrary loan request! Thanks for letting me know about this!

As it happens I re-read this one a few days ago and it's still an absolute pain to track down! The Lancet really doesn't make things easy

American Journal of Veterinary Research 1960-05: Vol 21 Iss 82 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive American Journal of Veterinary Research 1960-05: Volume 21, Issue 82.Digitized from IA1514212-01.Previous issue:...

For future reference: archive.org/details/sim_...

🚨We’re hiring a Postdoc to join our group at Oxford!

We’re developing methods to understand how pathogens evolve—across hosts, over time, & through molecular & structural change.

Keen or know someone who is? Please share!

🕒 3-year post
📅 Deadline: 30 May
🔗 Apply: www.jobs.ox.ac.uk/vacancy/179640

New paper on SARS-CoV-2 origins & timings accounting for recombination and similarities to the emergence of the first SARS virus 🦠

Does anyone have a copy of Beamer et al.'s "Resistance of the opossum to rabies virus" (American Journal of Veterinary Research, 1960)? #icanhazpdf

Africa’s Outbreak Response Is the Global Standard Now From outbreak containment to clinical innovation, African nations are setting new global standards for success

Uganda stopped a Sudan Ebola virus outbreak in under 3 months.
No chaos. Just fast action, local leadership, and a rapidly implemented vaccine trial.
Maybe the problem isn’t capacity in Africa after all—maybe it’s the story we keep telling about it.
open.substack.com/pub/bktitanj...

Today’s my first day as a postdoc at McMaster University! Excited to be working here for the next year 🇨🇦

"Although lyssavirus infection was not completely cleared from the brains of treated animals, disease signs resolved and virus was maintained at a stable low level for at least 4 months post‐infection. Thus, this therapy appears to yield a functional cure for rabies in this animal model."

Why experts worry more pet owners may skip rabies shots over vaccine hesitancy Public health experts and veterinarians are concerned about the potential for an increase in cases of rabies, a vaccine-preventable illness, for both companion animals and humans.

Fido and Fluffy need their rabies shots.

Rabies shots protect all of us - humans, pets, and all the neighborhood wildlife - from a virus that's nearly 100% fatal. There's no "let's wait" on this one

www.pbs.org/newshour/hea...

A positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus acquired a negative-sense open reading frame through recombination Author summary The discovery of brine shrimp virga-like virus 1 (BSVV1) challenges the conventional view that positive- and negative-sense RNA viruses are evolutionarily independent. Through genomic a...

Recombination between positive-sense and negative-sense RNA viruses: journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

An animal source of mpox emerges — and it’s a squirrel Researchers solve the mystery of a disease outbreak through long-term surveillance of wildlife in Africa.

Although the name 'monkeypox' comes from the virus's discovery in lab monkeys in 1958, researchers have long suspected rodents and other small mammals of being reservoir hosts

https://go.nature.com/3R9pYRJ

A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia - Nature Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of...

The vaccine against Shingles helps protect against dementia, results of a natural experiment, adding to prior evidence
"implications are profound"
New @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com/articles/s41...

An ‘Impossible’ Disease Outbreak in the Alps In one tiny town, more than a dozen people were diagnosed with the rare neurodegenerative disease ALS. Why?

Fascinating story and epidemiology. Good to read before mushroom hunting season starts around here www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Michigan patient dies after contracting rabies through a transplanted organ Potential organ donors are screened for viruses, bacteria and other infections, but rabies isn’t usually among those tests.

A Michigan resident who received a transplant in December died after having been infected with rabies from the new organ, the state health department says.

Influenza of avian origin confirmed in a sheep in Yorkshire Influenza of avian origin (H5N1) has been confirmed in a single sheep in Yorkshire.

The UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer has confirmed a case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) in a single sheep in Yorkshire following repeat positive milk testing.

To my knowledge, this is the first time the virus has been detected in sheep.

www.gov.uk/government/n...

The 2025 Barkley Marathons is over. There are no finishers. #BM100