Utrecht Virology Lab

Thrilled, and admittedly relieved, to see this major investment in Dutch #cryoEM become reality! 🇳🇱🔬

Honoured to be a co-applicant on this national initiative and very excited for the opportunity to advance our work in cellular structural virology! 🦠

www.uu.nl/en/news/33-m...

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?

👇

Human Coronavirus HKU1 Neutralizing Monoclonal Antibodies Target Diverse Epitopes Within and Around the TMPRSS2 Receptor Binding Site https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.29.685445v1

SARS-CoV-2 NSP14 inhibitor exhibits potent antiviral activity and reverses NSP14-driven host modulation - Nature Communications C10, a potent non-nucleoside inhibitor targeting NSP14’s SAM-binding pocket, suppresses viral translation, exhibits immunostimulatory effects, and reverses NSP14-induced transcriptome alterations, off...

SARS-CoV-2 NSP14 inhibitor exhibits potent antiviral activity and reverses NSP14-driven host modulation

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are looking for a computational postdoc to work with us on new optimisation algorithms to make #RELION even better. Join our bubbly team at the @mrclmb.bsky.social in Cambridge, UK. 🤗 RTs appreciated.

mrc.tal.net/vx/appcentre...

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.

The herpes simplex origin-binding protein: mechanisms for sequence-specific DNA binding and dimerization revealed by Cryo-EM pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41125242/ #cryoEM

OBP dimer

Using cryo-EM, we determined OBP structures at up to 2.8 Å resolution in multiple states:
1. bound to HSV-1 origin of replication (OriS) DNA

2. with a non-hydrolyzable ATP analog

3. as monomer, dimer, and higher-order assemblies

Mysteries of trafficking of the vRNP segmented genome and assembly of influenza A virus revealed by in situ cryo-ET!
🔗 rdcu.be/eMmct
We are very excited that our paper is finally out!
🎉 Big congratulations to Moritz Wachsmuth-Melm and to everyone involved.

Visualizing influenza A virus assembly by in situ cryo-electron tomography pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41130956/ #cryoEM

Finally, just about 2 years after finishing the postdoc the last part of my work is finally online! We determined the structure of HSV-1 Origin Binding Protein, the viral initiator of DNA replication, by cryo-EM 🧪🧬🧶🧵 #cryoEM #structuralbiology

YouTube video by MicrobeTV TWiV 1260 Clinical update corrected

In his weekly clinical update, Dr. Griffin with Vincent Racaniello chat about Jane Goodall’s death and the Nobel prize in Physiology/Medicine for understanding immune system control before Dr. Griffin deep dives into recent statistics on the measles epidemic, RSV, influenza and more👇

Spike mutations that affect the function and antigenicity of recent KP.3.1.1-like SARS-CoV-2 variants | Journal of Virology This study measures how mutations to the spike of a SARS-CoV-2 variant that circulated in early 2025 affect its function and recognition by both the polyclonal antibodies produced by the human immune system and monoclonal antibodies used as prophylactics. These measurements are made with a pseudovirus system that enables safe study of viral protein mutations using virions that can only infect cells once. The study identifies mutations that decrease recognition by current human antibody immunity; many of these mutations are increasingly being observed in new viral variants. It also shows the importance of mutations that move the spike’s receptor-binding domain up or down. Overall, these results are useful for forecasting viral evolution and assessing which newly emerging variants have reduced recognition by immunity and antibody prophylactics.

Spike mutations that affect the function and antigenicity of recent KP.3.1.1-like SARS-CoV-2 variants journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Cryo-EM resolves the structure of the archaeal dsDNA virus HFTV1 from head to tail This structure of an archaeal tailed virus (arTV) provides detailed insights into arTV assembly and infection mechanisms.

Out in Science Advances: Our #cryoEM structure of HFTV1, a virus infecting the halophile #archaea. *First full atomic structure (containing all structural proteins) of any tailed virus!* Congrats and thanks to all co-authors and our fantastic collaborators! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

CryoCloud is heading to Women in Electron Microscopy #WeM2025 this week!

We’re proud to sponsor this inaugural event supporting women in electron microscopy.

Our own @ievadr.bsky.social will speak on cloud-native automation to enable high-throughput #cryoEM for drug discovery.

See you there!

Rounding off an incredibly busy week with the excellent third installment of the Dutch Structural Biology Meeting! Many thanks to Arjen for the kind invitation to present our lab’s work.

Initial attempt at replicating in relion (parameters in next post). This is for Aca2-RNA, using a 100k subset of the 2D-classified particles (no prior 3D cleanup).

A 1-class ab initio in relion, then local refinement in relion (1.8deg searches+blush) gives a nominally 3.3Å map; 3.5 Å w/out blush.

Now we are on Bluesky, over the next couple of days we would like to introduce some of the MHD groups on Bluesky who you can follow for more research updates. Or check out our handy MHD starter pack 😀
go.bsky.app/SoVnvW3

Hepatitis C virus NS3/4A protease cleaves SPG20, a key regulator of lipid droplet turnover, to promote lipid droplet formation | Journal of Virology HCV infection often promotes the formation of large LDs in HCV-infected cells. However, the molecular mechanism underlying large LD formation is poorly understood. LD turnover is regulated by SPG20, I...

Hepatitis C virus NS3/4A protease cleaves SPG20, a key regulator of lipid droplet turnover, to promote lipid droplet formation journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

The structure of the Human Adenovirus 7 virus-like particles reveals that pentons and core-genome promote hexon-pIIIa interactions during capsid maturation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.22.677823v1 #cryoEM

Endoplasmic reticulum-anchored nonstructural proteins drive human astrovirus replication organelle formation Author summary Human astroviruses (HAstV) are understudied, globally prevalent pathogens capable of causing potentially fatal infections of the central nervous system in children, the elderly, and imm...

Endoplasmic reticulum-anchored nonstructural proteins drive human astrovirus replication organelle formation

journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Interactions between the 2C protein of FMDV and components of the viral replication machinery are mediated by ER-derived membranes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.17.676763v1

Coming up next week: the third Dutch Structural Biology meeting! Now in Delft, on Sept 26. See program here: nvbmb.kncv.nl/biology-2025 with #teamtomo #cryoEM #nmrchat simulations and more (looks like)

Organized by the #NVBMB (associated with KNCV)

Back from the 9th International Calicivirus Conference in Banff! Robin Veenstra and I really enjoyed both the stunning mountain views and the exciting science being shared in the field.

Thanks to the organisers for putting together this great meeting. Lots of exciting collaborations ahead!

This is overdue. XFG* is the 11th world dominant lineage, and the first to hold the title since KP.3.1.1 a year ago.

Strangely, there are still a few corners of the world (particularly China) where it is almost completely absent.

Well this is terrible… honestly the stuff I have to do for science - in Banff for the 9th international Calicivirus workshop.

In situ cryo-ET redefines HPV disassembly and transport paradigms

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Encephalomyocarditis virus protein 2B* interacts with 14-3-3 proteins through a phosphorylated C-terminal binding motif | mBio Encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV) infects a range of species, causing economically important reproductive disorders in pigs and encephalitis and myocarditis in rodents. Due to its wide host range, it ...

New paper: collaboration with Cambridge on EMCV 2B* now published journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Neutralizing antibodies reveal cryptic vulnerabilities and interdomain crosstalk in the porcine deltacoronavirus spike protein - Nature Communications Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is an emerging pig pathogen that has recently been detected in humans. Here, the authors demonstrate that neutralizing antibodies against PDCoV target cryptic sites th...

Link to the publication from @utrechtvirology.bsky.social: nature.com/articles/s41...

August Map of the Month: Epitope Mapping edition!

We reprocessed EMD-19016 and got a 2.7 Å map of PDCoV RBD in complex with two neutralising Fabs ✨

📊 4,736 movies
⚡️ 35.5 h cloud compute
🔬 2.7 Å map from 120k particles (0.3 Å better than published)

📬 DM or hi@cryocloud.io for more info!

#CryoEM