NYTimes shares a memoriam on Bernard Roizman’s many contributions to the study of HSV. The “strain F” that he first described has been a key example in many of our studies of HSV-1 genomes. nytimes.com/2026/06/04/scien…

Showing the data is the first rule of figures. So it's good news that biologists increasingly show the data in their figures--but there is still room for improvement. doi.org/10.1128/mbio.00572-2… #mBio

NIH slowdown hit women hardest. Five years of gain erased in ~1.5 cycles. Female PI-led R01 grants ⇣938 with $444M gone. This chart is the cleanest capture of this loss. Cuts landed where women lead: breast, ovarian, and gynecologic cancers. Dig deeper & the gap keeps widening: ▫️ women start small: $0.94M vs $1.4M for men ▫️ larger losses: 57.9% vs 48.2% for men ▪️ early-career hit hardest: 59.8% of affected assistant professor grants are women led This is how you reset a generation: ↳ cut funding → fewer labs ↳ fewer labs → fewer leaders ↳ fewer leaders → fewer women at the top Pipelines don't bounce back, they just thin out silently. If you are a woman in science, now is the time to pay attention Read more about this in first comment below = = = = = Source: NIH RePORTER via Jori (@jori_health) Method: PI gender-inference is non-trivial. Jori classified 91% algorithmically, then we manually reviewed profiles to classify another 6% (ie, ~ 3% remain unclassified). This chart reflects the 97% classified names with high confidence. = = = = =

Very sad to hear about the passing of Bernard Roizman. A real powerhouse in virology whose trainees are numerous and many have also had a profound impact on virology: annualreviews.org/content/jo…

ASV members at your service -- check out your @AmerSocVirol ballot! @SzparaLab @LiangDenglab @DrJDennehy @SalehLabParis @PaulTurnerLab Also but not online: Louis Mansky, Kai Wu, Shou-Wei Ding, Cristina Rosa, Welkin Pope, David Buchholz & Patrick Creisher

Pro tip for PSU students looking for a spring general-education class: Viruses in our World (SC 130) starts anew in January! Check out Katie Herron's Daily Collegian article about the new class: psucollegian.com/culture_lif…

Heads up, virologists! ASV's annual meeting is going to Montréal 🇨🇦 in July 2025, and abstract submission closes in <3 weeks -- Monday Feb. 3rd!!! 🔬 🧬 The ASV Program Committee is eagerly awaiting your excellent abstracts! ✍️

My favourite discovery ever has just come online. Can I please tell you about some seriously wacky molecular biology? The story starts with a reverse transcriptase that SOMEHOW defends bacteria from viruses. (👇 I recommend sound ON for the video 🎹) 1/

One of the reasons I've been quiet on Twitter for a few months is because I've been working on something big - something I'm really happy to share now! Pathoplexus.org A new, open-source database for pathogen sequence sharing. 👐🧬🌎 1/12