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I've written an essay with my views on how to balance risks & benefits in virology research: nytimes.com/2022/10/30/opi… Important to work together to arrive at regulations that maximize benefits of valuable research w/o creating new risks from potential pandemic viruses in lab.

Thank you very much Africa Health Research Institute Alex Sigal for inviting me to this fantastic workshop with exciting science in beautiful St. Lucia!

In new study, we examine evolution of #SARSCoV2 mutation spectrum. biorxiv.org/content/10.110… TLDR: There have been changes in relative rates of mutations during SARSCoV2’s evolution, & mutation spectrum is becoming more similar to other sarbecoviruses. Thread below.

This was a fun project with 🐘[email protected] ! See Jesse's thread for a summary! x.com/jbloom_lab/sta…

Our paper regarding Omicron convergent evolution is out on nature. In this story, we analyzed the immune evasion capability of ~50 convergent variants and explained how RBD mutations suddenly emerged convergently due to a more focused immune pressure. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Quick reminder: Tomorrow (Jan 3rd) is the abstract submission deadline for the 30th Viral dynamics and Evolution meeting. dynamicsevolution.org/event/1/page/2… This year's meeting will be in Heidelberg in April!

Brief update on our SC2 fitness landscape preprint: mstdn.science/@richardneher/…

Most of the credit for this part of the analysis goes to Cornelius Roemer!

Some more thoughts on BA.2.86 and preprint with Alex Sigal mstdn.science/@richardneher/…

PhD students and postdocs: apply to the 2024 #kitpqbio summer course, Mobile Elements in #MicrobialEvolution, at kitp.ucsb.edu/qbio. Application deadline March 3. Course directors Benjamin Good and Honour McCann. #microbialecology #horizontalgenetransfer

I put together a short thread on our recent preprint on eco-evolutionary dynamics of RNA viruses and their hosts immune systems: mstdn.science/@richardneher/…

If you are an advanced PhD Student or postdoc interested in quantitative approaches to horizontal processes in bacterial evolution (exp. and theory), don't miss this opportunity! Application deadline March 24!

We at the Biozentrum in Basel are launching a new MSc program in Physics of Life! Three semester of exciting courses and research. Apply by April 30 for this fall semester. And we also have a few fellowships! biozentrum.unibas.ch/education/degr…

If you are interested in phylogeography and its limitations, have a look at my new preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.110… I also made a short thread over on mstdn.science mstdn.science/@richardneher/…

Ever wondered how fast accessory genome dynamics of bacteria really is? In a new preprint we (Marco Molari, Liam Shaw) explore how rapidly E coli picks up genes horizontally, breaks genome synteny, etc.. biorxiv.org/content/10.110… For a thread by Marco see mstdn.science/@mrcmlr/112772…