Miranda

After 3 years, I’m very happy to share my postdoc work which has been published in @natcomms.nature.com 🎉

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

✨ Thank you @arhelnathalie.bsky.social for your guidance and support !

#influenza #NPC #RANBP2 #Nup358 #Inflammation #ANE #AcuteNecrotizingEncephalopathy
#virology

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)

Climate change in the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations: a qualitative study. Graph shows the evolution of different topics over different articles.

NEW PREPRINT! 🦠⚖️🌡️ The Pandemic Agreement is the first global health treaty to name climate change, and behind the scenes, the UNFCCC was a source of both inspiration and conflict. Cristina Arnés-Sanz and team tracked climate issues through three years of negotiations: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Animal organoids as transformative platforms for viral infections and zoonotic cross-species viral research | Journal of Virology As obligate intracellular parasites that rely on host cellular machinery for replication, viruses recall appropriate experimental models for elucidating virus-host interactions and pathogenic mechanisms. Traditionally, virology research has relied on two principal approaches: two-dimensional (2D) cell monolayers and in vivo animal models. Each methodology has contributed substantially to fundamental understanding of viral biology and pathogenesis, while presenting significant methodological constraints that would limit their translational relevance.

Animal organoids as transformative platforms for viral infections and zoonotic cross-species viral research journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Things I learned today:
The same genetic variant that protects against norovirus, also protects against rotavirus!
Protective SNP went up in frequency over last 8.5kya in Europe & Asia
We know cows & pigs have their own rotavirus species...
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

Twitter mentions Friday 6 February: 17,947 posts Bluesky, same timeframe: 24,512 posts

Since we have 2 months of 2026 data now, we can see if the trend we saw last year holds up: does research from the current year get shared more on Bluesky or X-Twitter?

As you can see here, we still see days regularly where Bluesky's volume of research sharing is markedly higher than Twitter.

1/9

Diversity and ecological roles of hidden viral players in groundwater microbiomes - Nature Communications Groundwater viruses are less well studied. Here, using large-scale sequencing, the authors uncover extensive, largely uncharacterized viral diversity in groundwater, showing that viruses infect domina...

New paper from @adjiep.bsky.social on viral impacts in groundwater at Nature Comms. Congratulations Adjie and team!

Read: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#viruses #viromics #groundwater

Silent reservoir species are shaping the emergence of Usutu virus - Nature Ecology & Evolution By collating molecular, serological and population data from multiple wildlife surveillance schemes, this paper demonstrates that host species other than the most-affected and sentinel blackbird speci...

Molecular, serological and population data from multiple wildlife surveillance schemes demonstrates that host species other than the most-affected and sentinel blackbird species must be involved in the transmission of Usutu virus in the Netherlands 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Social media highlights the overlooked impact of cats on arthropods The impact of domestic cats on vertebrate biodiversity is unequivocal; however, we still know little about their effects on arthropods. By analysing over 17,000 photos and videos from social media p...

For those of you who have (like me) watched cats batting at moths around your traps, this might be of interest. Or alternatively, not at all unexpected. #TeamMoth

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Holy cow! Our new study showing that H5 mRNA-LNP vaccines are safe and effective in lactating dairy cows is now posted on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social!

We found that our vaccine elicits protective responses in 2,000 pound dairy cows! 1/

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Control of retrotransposon-driven activation of the interferon response by the double-stranded RNA binding protein DGCR8 Abstract. The type I interferon (IFN) response is the main innate immune pathway against viruses in mammals. This pathway must be tightly regulated to prev

I'm so happy to share our latest paper! Now out in @narjournal.bsky.social 🥳

Did you know that transposable elements embedded in mRNAs can form dsRNA and activate innate immunity? 🧬🦠 Have a look! academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

#TEsky #RNAsky #RNAbiology #immunity #NAR

Influence of Carbon Dioxide and pH on Influenza Virus in Sessile Saliva Droplets Upon exhalation, virus-laden respiratory droplets experience rapid changes in environmental conditions that lead to chemical and physical alterations that can affect virus infectivity. By manipulating...

There has been a lot of interesting research on the pH of respiratory droplets and how it affects flu virus. We looked at large saliva droplets exposed to low and high CO2 and only saw a difference in viability at 80% RH with low CO2. pH changes were small.
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

A cellular basis for the mammalian nocturnal-diurnal switch Early mammals were nocturnal while dinosaurs dominated the daytime. Mammalian transition to daytime activity accelerated after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, but the underlying mechanisms remain...

Since I moved to @mrclmb.bsky.social I’ve been trying to answer this: Why are some mammals active at night and others in the day? Today our answer is out @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/....
If you’re interested in circadian biology, evolution or how timing shapes physiology, take a look

Illustration of the framework’s structure. Users can specify primary classes and secondary classes across both static and motion video streams (a–f). The right panel shows examples of static and color-from-motion frames from case studies. The color-from-motion trails create characteristic patterns that reveal movement and behavior. The grass moth (Crambidae) is nearly undetectable from still frames due to its color, and motion blur, but it is highly salient in the motion stream (g). The semaphore fly (Poecilobothrus nobilitatus) example shows how motion information can easily disentangle behaviors that are often identical from static frames (e.g., “fly” and “display” appear identical in the static frame, but different in motion). This example also showcases hierarchical classification, with secondary classifiers determining the sex of the flies (h). Sea slaters (Ligia oceanica) are highly camouflaged when static, and salient when moving, resulting in motion models that make far fewer errors (but cannot detect stationary individuals) (i). Human sperm have been classified based on their swimming movement with either symmetric (typically resulting in fast, straight movement), asymmetric (typically resulting in slow, circling, exploratory movement), or weak (twitching, vibrating etc…) strategies. These swimming strategies can be determined without tracking individuals, which is difficult in complex, debris-filled videos (j).

Despite advances, quantifying complex motion info remains challenging. @jtroscianko.bsky.social @kevinjgaston.bsky.social &co present BehaveAI, a #video analysis tool that sees motion as color, tracking animals & classifying #behavior in complex natural scenes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4kTF1wX

A STING signaling pathway that inhibits DNA virus replication is also protective against RNA viruses, forming spillover barrier against influenza
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
@science.org

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom - Nature Ecology & Evolution Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom www.nature.com/articles/s41... - new paper with Clinton Haarlem, Cliodhna Hynes and colleagues

Different species see the world as fast as they need to...

Sweets from Paris

Was great to have @adeczkowska.bsky.social here, who delivered science & sweets from @aleksdelab.bsky.social of @pasteur.fr. Even more: She pointed out this stimulating essay by Ruslan Medzhitov on the balance of knowledge in immunology: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 @natrevimmunol.nature.com

Should biology put complexity first? The dictum “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” poses a problem for biology. How simply can it be told without doing dama…

Should biology put complexity first? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - excellent essay by @philipcball.bsky.social. I would add epistasis to polygenicity and pleiotropy as a ubiquitous and fundamental phenomenon, not some optional complication that we can try to account for afterwards

I didn't know about the GEOCODE cohort until I saw this new paper in @natureportfolio.nature.com on machine learning cytokine responses in healthy humans from Claire Liefferinckx et al. (@ulbruxelles.bsky.social)
Very cool!
www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪

Using data from Table1(*), here are the contributions of each discipline to bioRxiv over time.

Evolutionary biologists used to be leaders in preprint use, but were displaced, and now neuroscientists are by far the greatest contributers of preprints to bioRxiv

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.

Ancient herpes simplex 1 genomes reveal recent viral structure in Eurasia Medieval human herpes simplex virus 1 genomes implicate Bronze Age migrations in lineage distribution in Eurasia.

Skellies with herpes are my favourites www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The surge of HPAI in cattle has had an intersting side effect - way more research, and detections, of influenza D virus.
👉 www.science.org/content/arti...

A novel glycoform of the rotavirus outer capsid protein VP7 is secreted from polarized cells and activates innate immune cells | Journal of Virology Rotavirus (RV) exhibits a mode of assembly unique among non-enveloped animal viruses whereby virion morphogenesis occurs within an endomembrane compartment. The outer shell of rotavirus is assembled within the lumen of the ER where a glycoprotein VP7 is transferred to immature particles that bud from cytoplasmic inclusions. Lytic release of virions from non-polarized cells has obscured the fate of rotavirus glycoproteins from cells with a differentiated phenotype. This study reveals that in polarized cells, a significant proportion of VP7 is secreted, independently of virions, and acquires novel glycan signatures through extensive modification of N- and O-linked glycosylation within the medial Golgi complex. Secreted VP7 exhibited agonism of Toll-like receptors and activated several distinct subsets of innate immune cells while retaining conformationally dependent neutralizing epitopes associated with a trimeric structure indicating a potential role for the secreted capsid glycoprotein in modulating both innate and adaptive immune responses to rotavirus infection.

A novel glycoform of the rotavirus outer capsid protein VP7 is secreted from polarized cells and activates innate immune cells journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Tomorrow at the #SystemsVirologyJournalClub, Joel Tan (@joelmjtan.bsky.social) will present his work with Philip Kranzusch (@kranzuschlab.bsky.social) on a DNA-gated molecular guard that control bacterial anti-phage defence.

Paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40306316/

Scientists in @harvardmed.bsky.social have created a new family of tools that, for the first time, shows the missing pieces to the puzzle on how the immune system uses cytokines to communicate with the rest of the body.

🧫 @cellpress.bsky.social: https://bit.ly/40qkk27
📰: https://bit.ly/40rN6PR

In new study we examine constraints on evolution of endemic "common-cold" coronavirus 229E

We find strong tradeoff between antibody neutralization & receptor binding, due to up-down position of spike RBD

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

See lead author Sheri Harari's summary: x.com/SheriHarari/...

Functional and antigenic constraints on the Nipah virus fusion protein | PNAS Nipah virus is a highly pathogenic virus in the family Paramyxoviridae that utilizes two distinct surface glycoproteins to infect cells. The recept...

In new study led by Brendan Larsen, we map functional constraint across the Nipah virus F protein to define constrained epitopes for antibody targeting and identify mutations that stabilize the prefusion conformation for vaccine immunogens.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

RSV and SARS-CoV-2 infections induce similar IFN but distinct inflammatory, epigenetic, and NK cell responses in infants @asathibodeau.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @jacksonlab.bsky.social @stjuderesearch.bsky.social

Deciphering the etiology of the 2024 outbreak of undiagnosed febrile illness in Panzi, Democratic Republic of the Congo - Nature Medicine This multidisciplinary response to investigate the large outbreak of unknown febrile illness in the Panzi Health Zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in late 2024 suggests that the outbreak wa...

What happened during a febrile illness outbreak in Panzi, Democratic Republic of the Congo?

Was it something new or something we knew?

Check out the amazing collaboration (inc. @pathogenomenick.bsky.social & @arambaut.bsky.social ) that came together:

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