Scientists say they have made some of the first direct measurements of how long it takes an individual, ordinary protein to fold – and the results were surprising.
go.nature.com/3N4UrSD
Influenza A(H3N2) subclade K (J.2.4.1) dominated this winter (>80% of infections in the Northern Hemisphere).
Baseline antibody titers to subclade K variants were lower than to other H1N1/H3N2 strains—and vaccine-induced responses were also significantly weaker.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration!
Linking below previous thread on our findings
⏰Abstract submission for #ViBioM2026 is open until midnight tonight (00:00 CET) - Don't miss your chance to present a talk at the International Virus Bioinformatics Meeting! 🎤🦠🧬💻
👉 evbc.uni-jena.de/events/vibio...
#virology #bioinformatics
Direct binding to host Pol II for cap snatching could explain why this negative-strand RNA virus replicates in the nucleus. Really elegant biology.
Co-transcriptional cap snatching by influenza virus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase helps make viral mRNAs stable and competent for nuclear export and translation @nature.com @maxplanck.de
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A real nice work on influenza replication complex :
Coupling of polymerase-nucleoprotein-RNA in an influenza virus mini ribonucleoprotein complex | Nature Communications
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64741-z
Exploring ICTV virus metadata just got easier on ViralZone — interactive table, instant CSV export, and full search. The new species names are displayed alongside virus names and acronyms.
viralzone.expasy.org/resources/VM...
(source: ictv.global/vmr)
The ViralZone alphavirus virion just got an update based on the latest chikungunya virus data. Check out the fascinating pattern of the capsid linked to the membrane proteins.
viralzone.expasy.org/625
Congratulations on this incredible milestone! Five years of pioneering work on viral proteins, and now Viro3D integrated into AlphaFold DB — that's the kind of data that moves science forward. Well deserved! 🎉
It is almost five years since I first applied AlphaFold to a handful of viral proteins.
Today, hundreds of thousands of predictions and many discoveries later, we are delighted to announce the integration of our Viro3D dataset into the @ebi.embl.org and Google DeepMind AlphaFold Database.
That is some cool shit, right there! Detailed structure of a herpesvirus tail!! Lineal descendants of bacterial viruses and their structures are among us....😁 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The NIAID is expected to deprioritize biodefense and pandemic preparedness in an overhaul of its funded research projects
go.nature.com/4kBhiRT
Here we go: a method to predict symmetric protein complexes—exactly what’s needed to reconstruct full viral capsids from AlphaFold models.
Rabies an increasing threat in Ukraine - The Lancet Infectious Diseases www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Nipah virus was first identified in Malaysia, but in the past decade outbreaks have repeatedly hit Kerala, India (2018, 2019, 2021, 2023, 2024), causing at least 21 deaths. In 2025, suspected cases are once again under investigation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipah_v...
Here’s a genomic map of Nipah virus sequences collected globally from ~1998–2025, based on Nextstrain’s phylogenetic dataset.
nextstrain.org/nipah/all
Nipah virus is a long-known zoonosis, spilling over from fruit bats and capable of human-to-human spread. Small outbreaks occur almost every year, especially in Kerala, India.
In the recent West Bengal outbreak, the unknown source of infection has led to heightened precautions.
FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social.
📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason
💾 github.com/steineggerla...
Rift Valley Fever continues to spread among humans, livestock, & wildlife throughout west Africa. Learn more about the wide-ranging impacts of this disease at an upcoming webinar on Jan 20 hosted by @buceid.bsky.social & @onehealthinstitute.bsky.social VISTA program.
bostonu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
The infection enigma: why some people die from typically harmless germs
www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com @dianakwon.bsky.social
Zoom seminar:
Drawing on recent mechanistic and genetic studies, Prof Andres Merits' talk will highlight how #alphavirus #replication complex function intersects with innate #immune sensing and restriction, offering fresh perspectives on virus–host co-evolution and antiviral targeting. All welcome!
New "PanMAN" tool for pangenomics compresses millions of genomes into a tiny fraction of storage space: 8 million SARS-CoV-2 sequences in 366MB! Builds on pathogen tracking tools pioneered @ucsantacruz.bsky.social. Will improve public health response & vaccine development. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
From inert nutshell to transcriptional factory: a remarkable discovery showing how a simple viral capsid springs to life upon access to NTPs in the infected cell.
A new kind of viral oncogenesis — beautifully demonstrated. It suddenly all makes sense.
Very interesting paper from the beautiful city of York, which provides a mechanistic explanation for the epidemiological link between BK polyomavirus infection/replication in kidney transplant recipients, and subsequent urothelial carcinoma. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41337590/
📢Join us for the next ECR #Viromics Webinar
"Ocean physics, phytoplankton-virus interactions and the carbon cycle: implications for aggregation and export"
🎙️Dr. Kay Bidle, Rutgers University, USA
🗓️14 Jan 2026, 4 PM CET
📍Online/Zoom (register for login details)
👉 evbc.uni-jena.de/events/ecr-v...
![dsRNA injection to N. vectensis zygotes triggers mild and transient gene knockdown. Top: Schematic representation of the dsRNA carrying eGFP sequence used in this study and of the transgene of the actin::eGFP line [40]. Bottom left: Heterozygous actin::eGFP embryos showing dimmer eGFP fluorescence 24 hpi of dsRNA carrying eGFP sequence (left) compared to scrambled eGFP sequence (right). Scale bars represent 500 µm. Bottom right: No difference in eGFP fluorescence of heterozygous actin::eGFP embryos is exhibited 72 hpi of dsRNA carrying eGFP sequence (left) compared to scrambled eGFP sequence (right). Scale bars represent 500 µm.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5522ztebtekoor5efelihqhb/bafkreibcytm7tkd5lfkqqb3opea5ptwopbn3yzlw633irru3v6eq2azxtq)
#RNAi is an ancestral #antiviral system that degrades viral RNA, but what about in #cnidarians? @yehumoran.bsky.social &co show that #Nematostella has an siRNA-mediated antiviral response that lacks 2ary amplification & functions as a short-term antiviral mechanism @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3N192OD
The fundamental problem with GISAID is this - data on the platform are neither open, nor FAIR.
Such data - key for combating infectious diseases - are, by a large margin, paid for by taxpayers and hence must be openly available to all.
With GISAID, they are not.
www.science.org/content/arti...
