Áine O'Toole 's Avatar

Áine O'Toole

@aineotoole

Virus evolution, bioinformatics & phylogenetics. Researcher at University of Edinburgh.

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28.11.2023
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Latest posts by Áine O'Toole @aineotoole

A long thread about mpox and the context specific nature of outbreaks prompted by the large outbreak of MPXV Clade IIb happening at the moment in Sierra Leone:

25.05.2025 11:29 👍 90 🔁 46 💬 2 📌 5
Screenshot of the homepage of Pathoplexus, showing tiles to navigate to the supported pathogens CCHF, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, HMPV, Mpox, RSV-A, RSV-B, and West Nile virus.

Screenshot of the homepage of Pathoplexus, showing tiles to navigate to the supported pathogens CCHF, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, HMPV, Mpox, RSV-A, RSV-B, and West Nile virus.

📢Today Pathoplexus announces the inclusion of 2 new viral pathogens: RSV (A & B) and HMPV.

These respiratory viruses cause a serious health burden, particularly in infants & the vulnerable, & Pathoplexus aims to support sequence sharing to improve understanding & response.

1/4

22.05.2025 16:05 👍 43 🔁 27 💬 2 📌 2
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Ambitious project to develop low-cost genome sequencing for pathogens known and unknown May 2025: Wellcome Trust-funded ARTIC-2 project will build on research that facilitated thousands of diagnostic laboratories to gain sequencing capacity for COVID-19 during the pandemic and permit the...

ARTIC2 now has THREE investigators at the @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social on the project. @aineotoole.bsky.social is leading on building analytical packages for genome analysis (building on her work on Civet, Squirrel, Pangolin and others) edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

22.05.2025 11:13 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
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Delighted to see launch of ARTIC-2 project - colleagues @aineotoole.bsky.social @arambaut.bsky.social and @rmcolq.bsky.social working with @pathogenomenick.bsky.social @articnetwork.bsky.social to develop low-cost pathogen genome sequencing 🧪🦠🧫

edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

23.05.2025 13:01 👍 23 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 1
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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...

22.05.2025 10:57 👍 229 🔁 80 💬 7 📌 4
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Description Please note that job descriptions are not exhaustive, and you may be asked to take on additional duties that align with the key responsibilities ment...

Wendy Barclay and I are recruiting a postdoc for a project investigating the evolution of swine influenza viruses and how this impacts future pandemic potential.

Job is based at Imperial's South Kensington campus. Drop me a DM/email for more details.
www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

16.01.2025 14:29 👍 44 🔁 42 💬 0 📌 2

That is horrifying 🙈

14.01.2025 08:32 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Fieldbioinformatics Updates > Fieldbioinformatics updated to 1.6.0 Fieldbioinformatics has been the first line recommendation by the artic network for generation of consensus sequences from Nanopore viral amplicon sequencing d...

I've written a quick post about the recent changes to the @articnetwork.bsky.social fieldbioinformatics pipeline

virological.org/t/fieldbioin...

13.01.2025 10:49 👍 17 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
An image with text describing the jobs, and the logo of the Royal Veterinary College. The text says:

Title: Hiring two postdoctoral researchers. 

What? Improve identification and response to emerging and endemic virus threats.
Where? Royal Veterinary College.
How? Genomics, metagenomics, phylogenetics.
Who: Working with Prof Oliver Pybus, Dr Sarah Hill, Dr Jayna Rahgwani, and GAP DC. 
When? Apply by 27th January 2025. 

Underneath this, there are two boxes describing the two roles:
Role 1: Phylodynamics: Introduction, emergence and spread of viruses in farmed and wild animals. 
Role 2: Detect and understand threats to/from wildlife and their environments.

An image with text describing the jobs, and the logo of the Royal Veterinary College. The text says: Title: Hiring two postdoctoral researchers. What? Improve identification and response to emerging and endemic virus threats. Where? Royal Veterinary College. How? Genomics, metagenomics, phylogenetics. Who: Working with Prof Oliver Pybus, Dr Sarah Hill, Dr Jayna Rahgwani, and GAP DC. When? Apply by 27th January 2025. Underneath this, there are two boxes describing the two roles: Role 1: Phylodynamics: Introduction, emergence and spread of viruses in farmed and wild animals. Role 2: Detect and understand threats to/from wildlife and their environments.

🦠 We are recruiting two 2-year postdocs to work at the intersection of virus genomics and infectious disease. jobs.rvc.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx... Please share widely!

18.12.2024 18:03 👍 22 🔁 18 💬 1 📌 4
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Please share widely!

We are recruiting a 3-year postdoc at the RVC to develop new methodology to infer epidemic dynamics from wild animal viromes sampled across changeable environments.

Further details: jobs.rvc.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

Feel free to reach out with any questions. Deadline Feb 9th

10.01.2025 14:05 👍 16 🔁 16 💬 0 📌 4

🧪🎅 12 Days of Tools for Science Management 🦠🎄
Twas the weeks before Christmas when all through the lab, not a beaker was stirring, not even a culture-of-Pseudomonas. The meetings have lessened (kinda), the textbooks are closed.. & I found myself reflecting on how we get things done in academia (1/4)

11.12.2024 14:18 👍 35 🔁 9 💬 4 📌 0
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This doctor raised the alarm about a deadly mpox outbreak that went global Placide Mbala is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2024.

Congratulations to my dear friend & colleague Placide Mbala at INRB in Kinshasa! 🎉

He is one of Nature's 10 people who shaped science this year

He is an incredible scientist and person who has dedicated his career to fighting diseases like Ebola, COVID, and #mpox. 🙌

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

09.12.2024 20:05 👍 58 🔁 13 💬 0 📌 0

Really exciting development from the @pathoplexus.org team, with a new curated database for mpox genomic data.

Glad to see these rapid data sharing efforts taking shape, guided by consistent, transparent governance and an ongoing commitment to equity and fairness.

10.12.2024 01:20 👍 16 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0

@pathoplexus.org now accepting MPXV genomes. I've played around with it's upload interface and it's genuinely so intuitive to use and has a lot of great error catching functionality!

09.12.2024 19:27 👍 28 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0
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Preliminary analysis of 98 genomic sequences of MPXV clade Ib cases from Burundi, July to September 2024 Preliminary analysis of 98 genomic sequences of MPXV clade Ib cases from Burundi, July to September 2024 Introduction A large mpox clade Ib virus outbreak started in the province of South Kivu in th...

Fabulous work with colleagues in Burundi, who took up Mpox sequencing to understand the situation AND are willing to share pre-publication, shows the expanding tree, and evidence for several introductions not taking off. In progress virological.org/t/preliminar...

21.11.2024 07:52 👍 141 🔁 37 💬 2 📌 2

A REALLY big flavi-like virus...https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.08.574764v1.full.pdf

09.01.2024 23:41 👍 26 🔁 13 💬 3 📌 1
7 hand-painted glass ornaments in a plastic tray

7 hand-painted glass ornaments in a plastic tray

Just finished some new moon ornaments for my tree! Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Triton, and the Moon. Hope you like them! 🐡🔭🧪

20.12.2023 08:24 👍 693 🔁 95 💬 42 📌 9

It was so good to see you after so long! 😊

05.12.2023 19:34 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0