Chris Brooke

Functions and evolution of viral proteins #virology #viruses #proteins #MicroSky @asm.org journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Students from North Carolina A&T can be seen marching back to their HBCU after voting on the first day of early voting in the state. The Guilford County Board of Elections voted to remove the school’s on-campus polling site. (video via Todd Simmons) greensboro.com/news/local/g...

Oct 13 comment deadline for NIH peer review score binning is fast approaching! Please add your voice! Direct link to RFI: rfi.grants.nih.gov?s=6a2b1c22c3... Background on why it matters: 27unihted.substack.com/p/nih-wants-...

I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.

David Quammen's essay in The New York Times today closes with this paragraph. It's both a scientific falsehood, and an incredibly dangerous narrative. If you're willing to give me five minutes of your time, I'd like to explain why.

Thrilled to see this published today! Truly special because we made the initial discovery >15 yrs ago! We found two copies of a human gene called BC200 embedded in a human poxvirus. BC200 blurs the line between gene & transposon—both functional & mutagenic! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/n

Now online! Direct cell-to-cell transmission of retrotransposons

Our lab just put out a new preprint! Led by Maria Maltepes, we've been working with @tavisanderson.bsky.social and @alexey-markin.bsky.social to understand how host species impacts the fundamentals of how influenza viruses evolve. TLDR, reassortment and selection rates vary widely across species.

IU is hiring a virologist. I am so excited. Come join a great group of scientists and people.

We wrote a review! Hope you enjoy reading it! #antibody #influenza #immunity onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

FUCK ICE

The utility of lab leak trutherism adopted by the GOP becomes more clear. It paves the way to drain publicly funded science money and feed the war machine instead of

www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/h...

The sole purpose of this is to suck NIAID dry and take away funding for infectious disease research. The administration attempted to do that earlier by demanding major restructuring and funding cuts for NIAID, but were rebuffed by congress - this'll achieve the same www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/u...

Functional atlas of vertebrate viral RNA elements that stabilize RNA and enhance translation @cellcellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Bats’ remarkable longevity and immunity are linked through pleiotropic adaptations to viruses and ageing-related disease @nature.com @psudmant.bsky.social @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @lucievirevolte.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Why do most cross-species #virus jumps fail? @sfelenalab.bsky.social &co use Orsay virus across multiple Caenorhabditis species to reveal how mismatches in replication, genome balance and transmission create layered barriers to #spillover @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4gCVoxg

Alina Chan is a discredited crank and it is embarrassing for the Times to publish this

The link to comment on this proposal is in the RFI. Please, please comment. This is nonsense.

I'm excited to share a preprint that's been years in the making: the idea took shape during the COVID pandemic. Anecdotally, people would sometimes spread COVID at work but not at home, and vice versa. Why? One explanation would be if infectiousness is fleeting...

Happy to see @lizthayer.bsky.social's magnum opus published in peer-reviewed form in @cp-cellsystems.bsky.social!! Check it out! www.cell.com/cell-systems...

OUR WORK IS NOT DONE. In unusual move, NSF issued a request for information on plan to conform grant policies to the proposed (unfinalized) OMB rule. Plan includes changes to grant termination provisions & disallowing publication costs. Comments due August 24. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Not too late -- COMMENT! Stop this horrendous, existential threat to USA science. Some resources to write your comment are pinned to my profile.

Lab account is official! go follow @antigenevo.bsky.social 👇👇👇 research.pasteur.fr/en/team/anti...

Since the 1960s, the genetic code has been used to predict protein sequences from DNA and mRNA sequences. Our @nature.com article demonstrates that these predictions miss thousands of protein sequences present in human tissues. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

Welcome to the Fascist States of America, where the EiC of a leading journal is forcibly removed by police for passing out his own editorial at the annual meeting of the field’s association…because it’s “too political” (read: it calls on scientists to speak out & stand up). We are here. This is it.

This started in 2019 as daydreamy PhD student musings with Tatsuya Araki. We're as excited as ever about germinal centers as a platform for experimental evolution. Many thanks to PIs @victora.bsky.social @matsen.bsky.social, co-1st authors Ashni Vora and Tatsuya, and many other key collaborators!

On OMB's proposal to make all grants political: "Speak up! Now’s the time! Standing by the side of the room, glancing around nervously and hoping that somebody else does something will lead us to disaster. These are not normal times, so stop acting as if they are." www.science.org/content/blog...

Very excited about our recent preprint- @lindashuyingxu.bsky.social and collabs discover that neutrophils repurpose their nucleolus for storage of pre-made IFN-I to be rapidly released via a nucleolar stress response that results in nucleolar extrusion and secretion. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...

I'm very excited to share this preprint led by @sorenlouislarsen.bsky.social and Chloe Yand, and made possible by the collaboration with my friend and colleague @ayesha-mahmud.bsky.social. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is bad. Bad for researchers. Bad for science. Bad for universities. Bad for professional associations. For example: 1. Every award would be vetted by political appointees, who could overrule peer reviewers and deny the award if it doesn't advance the president's priorities. 1/🧵

And, here, in much more detail. This is an absolutely critical read for all federally funded scientists and institutions. Now is not the time to sit in the corner, hoping you won't be noticed - now is the time for action. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...

Thrilled to announce that the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington, School of Medicine is hiring at the Assistant Professor level (tenure-track)! The Pacific Northwest is an awesome place to live and do science 🧪🦠. Join us! apply.interfolio.com/185622 Applications due 8/1.

Please share widely! Abstract submissions open for the 2026 Jacques Monod conference: Ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions in a changing world! Held in beautiful Roscoff France from November 2- 6, 2026. Abstracts submission deadline : June 6 cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...

Absolutely extraordinary work from Hui Gao, John Briggs and co @mpibiochem.bsky.social on the structure of the influenza matrix protein in situ, particularly in filamentous virions. It's beautiful, and answers questions I've been wondering about for twenty years www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Latent endogenous giant viruses drive active infection and inheritance in a multicellular algal host www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Scoop: There has been a massive shakeup at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Eight of the top ten officials have now been pushed out since President Donald Trump took office. In @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Excited to announce that we are moving the lab to Minneapolis to join the University of Minnesota Department of Microbiology & Immunology and Institute on Infectious Diseases this summer!! We will be hiring so please reach out if interested in viral evolution, viral immunology, etc.!!

“HHS is punishing a world-class scientist who was working to protect people against pandemics, and if he had been listened to more thoroughly, we might have been better prepared for SARS-CoV-2” This might be the most insane thing yet. www.science.org/content/arti...

“The message, very clearly, they’re sending is, do not speak out on behalf of Chinese postdocs. If you do, you’re going to pay a penalty...It seems pretty obvious that this is an attempt by the current administration to silence people that question their activities." — Roger Innes, IU AAUP member