📢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

Excited to announce the start of ARTIC2! 🎉

ARTIC2 builds on the success of ARTIC aiming to make sequencing more equitable and accessible. 🤝🧬

EVE Group at Swiss TPH is a key team member - we'll be helping make sequences easier to store and share via Loculus & @pathoplexus ! 🌎

More info in the link! 👀👇🏻
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/ambitious-project-to-develop-low-cost-genome-sequencing-for-pathogens-known-and-unknown

Let's go #Eurovision!
Congrats #Basel on such a great event! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Wishing myself a happy 10 year Viva-versary! 🎓🎉

I could never have imagined that day what lay in store for me after completing my PhD - and am so incredibly grateful for all those who helped me to get there, and helped me from there to here!

Here's to the next 10 years of scientific adventures! 🥂

It's a huge honour to have been named one of In Vivo's 'Rising leaders' of 2025! 🙏

And a huge congratulations to all of the incredible pharma, medical, and health scientists selected this year! 🎉

https://insights.citeline.com/in-vivo/leadership/rising-leaders/in-vivos-2025-rising-leaders-XTIUE3MM2FFBPNDOQKWH6I3QSY/

💠And similarly, on the Shared Mutations page:

In addition, you’ll notice some nice touches in functionality & tidying up across the page - like the much-shorter legends! 📏

And more cool things are to come soon, stay tuned! 👂

3/3

🎚️ This switch applies to all pages & charts across CoVariants.org, and all elements (except tables where both were already displayed!)

For example, here's the legend on the Per Country 🗺️ view:

2/3

🙏Thanks to support from @CH_universities & help from @tngtech, particularly Simon - we've got a very exciting update to CoVariants! 📢

🎉You can now switch between Nextstrain & Pango lineages!! 🎚️

1/3

🗓️ Pathoplexus has now been around for 7 months!

And both we and our users have been busy - so we wanted to share some updates & highlights!

📰 You can see our full News Item here: pathoplexus.org/news/2025-04-16-spring-update

1/9

@nevislsland I couldn't place the location so can't say conclusively that it isn't, but seems unlikely as we rarely went there. More likely to be Aberdeen or nearby, or perhaps Newcastle/Gateshead area 🙂

Did you even grow up in the UK if you don't have 'summer' holiday snaps like this? 😆

(In case you can't tell, I'm the one drowning in her parka on the left.)

#summerTimeAndTheLivingsEasy #britishSummer

It's hard to come up with new ways to say that the latest thing is harmful and horrifying.

But *this* cannot be understated in its intent to silence and terrorise. Coming to the US now means losing basic rights of expression.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/g-s1-59149/immigrants-social-media-antisemitism-dhs

It's beyond ridiculous that one of TWO BSL4 (highest security) labs in the USA & World Reference Centre for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses has had funding cut by Trump & DOGE because it had a COVID component.

We are willfully & actively throwing valuable & critical science in the trash.

Defend science 🔬
Defend truth ⚖️
Defend education 👩🏻‍🏫
Defend our environment 🌍
Defend our fellow people 🫂

Defend your rights ✊🏻

#HandsOff2025

In other news, our travel alert program is providing me with wonderfully concise lists of where one can show up to protest on April 5 :)

If it can happen to them, it can happen to you.

And soon fear of it happening to you, will keep you from speaking out against them. That's by plan, not by accident.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-warrantless-arrests-chicago-law?utm_campaign=propublica-sprout&utm_content=1743244920&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

The administration is slashing HHS & its agencies, but #H5N1 #birdflu doesn't care.
#USDA reports another infected herd in California today, the state's 758th. A full 77% of the state's herds have been infected.
Cumulative national total: 996 herds in 17 states.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/hpai-confirmed-cases-livestock

This is a disgrace to every American and a bullet to the heart of the culture of research, science, and innovation that has made the US a world-leader in disease, treatment, and prevention.

Journalists: now is the time publicize your Signal handles (again).

https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/01/hhs-layoffs-start-under-rfk-jr-trump-administration/

One of the things that has been crucial in making America a global leader in technology and innovation is education and research. Cutting these is cutting the future of the US short. And it's an insult to every American, & future Americans, who deserve better.

A Canadian friend's perspective on US behavior since the Trump regime was installed:

---cut here---

One thing I've learned over the past few weeks, and it's been a bit of a sobering lesson, is that a lot of Americans I know don't actually know what's going on between the US and Canada right now, and just how seriously Canadians are taking this. So, against my better judgement, here's a timeline to explain why we're here, and why we're angry.

Nov 30th, 2018 - The United States, Canada and Mexico finalize a trade agreement. Trump personally negotiates the terms and signs the document, celebrating it as 'the greatest trade agreement in history". (This is important.)

Nov 29th, 2024 - In a face to face meeting, Trump threatens the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, that he will be imposing 25% tariffs and that if Canada wants to avoid that, it should join the US as a state.

Nov 30th, 2024 - Trump publicly calls our Prime Minister 'Governor Trudeau' and instructs his staff to only address him as Governor going forward. He again suggests Canada should join the USA.
Dec 3rd, 2024 - Trump remarks that he would split Canada into two states once annexed.