🤯 Damn!

It’s certainly possible. We’ve tried to grow our clinical OC43 viruses in a range of cell lines with no success. We haven’t tried organoids from different tissues.

Our findings show that contemporary viruses should be used for the study of seasonal coronavirus biology and evaluation of medical countermeasures.

We also compared the replication of isolates to the lab strain in models of the human respiratory tract and found differences in respiratory tract tropism.

We made stocks of these isolates in immortalised cell lines. NL63 isolates replicated in LLC-MK2 cells and this was boosted by ACE2 and TMPRSS2 over-expression. 229E isolates replicated well in Huh7 cells, with a modest increase in the isolates when we over-expressed TMPRSS2.

We found these isolates showed the highest genetic variability in their Spikes compared to lab-adapted reference strains.

We used human airway and alveolar epithelial cultures to recover 15 contemporary isolates of human coronaviruses NL63, 229E and OC43.

Most studies focusing on seasonal coronaviruses are limited to lab-adapted strains that were isolated decades ago and have been passaged in cell culture who knows how many times.

Our study describing the isolation and characterisation of contemporary seasonal #coronaviruses is out 🦠🎉🎊 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Led by @jessneil26.bsky.social at @thedohertyinst.bsky.social

A neutralizing human antibody induces movement of the HCoV-229E receptor binding domain HCoV-229E is an endemic Alphacoronavirus that typically causes common cold-like disease in most healthy adults, but can also cause severe respiratory disease in the very young and the elderly. Althoug...

Very excited to share our latest preprint describing the isolation and characterization of neutralizing HCoV-229E-directed antibodies from a human donor! Great collaboration between DHVI and the Baric and Sheahan (@timothysheahan.bsky.social) labs at UNC.

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

Job opportunity: Research Technician at VIDO

Calling all virologists: my lab is hiring a tech for high containment work! Come work with our amazing team at 🇨🇦's National Pandemic Research Centre, using experimental, systems biology, & AI-driven approaches to study infection & pathogenesis of emerging viruses.
vido.applytojobs.ca/research/38682

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
-the main cluster lacks a link to a camel, which means there is one or more missing cases. But that's not unusual for #MERS-CoV outbreaks. Prolonged contact necessary for transmission.
www.who.int/emergencies/...

Column: A CIA 'assessment' revives the fact-free claim that COVID started in a Chinese lab Not a speck of evidence has emerged showing that the COVID virus leaked from a Chinese lab. So why does a just-released CIA statement claim that it did? Blame politics.

My latest column: Trump's CIA revives a lie about COVID origins
www.latimes.com/business/sto...

Heard from inside the National Cancer Institute, part of NIH — travel through April is canceled. Purchasing with government card is frozen. All public comms are off limits. Can’t even submit abstracts to future meetings. Can’t submit *manuscripts* for publication. All hiring activity frozen. Fuck.

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-...

First #FluorescenceFriday of the year calls for firework-esque staining.

🎁 Early Xmas present from your friends at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research @cvrinfo.bsky.social

We're thrilled to unwrap Viro3D - a comprehensive database of virus protein structures: >85,000 predicted structures from 4,400 human & animal viruses! 🦠

viro3d.cvr.gla.ac.uk

The persistent pool of HIV-1-infected cells is formed episodically during untreated infection | Journal of Virology Cells harboring HIV-1 proviruses that persist on antiretroviral therapy (ART) constitute the main barrier to an HIV-1 cure. Recent work has elucidated that the majority of persisting proviruses harbor...

The persistent pool of HIV-1-infected cells is formed episodically during untreated infection journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Always a treat to catch up with past and current members of the Beard Lab 🦠 @ausvirologysoc.bsky.social #AVS12

A single mutation in bovine influenza H5N1 hemagglutinin switches specificity to human receptors In 2024, several human infections with highly pathogenic clade 2.3.4.4b bovine influenza H5N1 viruses in the United States raised concerns about their capability for bovine-to-human or even human-to-h...

I have a few brief thoughts on this just released Science paper on the adaptation potential of bovine #H5N1 HA. Its very good work by very good group at Scripps! Think people need to be cautious in assessing the actualized risk out of this one study. #influenza

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I've made a starter pack for Aussie virologists joining Bluesky at #AVS12. Let me know if you would like to be added- please share 🤗

@ausvirologysoc.bsky.social

go.bsky.app/FgBEzfc