Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 09/10/2026To me, this highlights why having reliable, pathogen-specific evolutionary rate estimates available before an outbreak matters because even with sparse early genomic data, they can provide valuable first estimates of outbreak timing and dynamics while richer data are being generated. 142
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 09/10/2026There was useful debate at the time about which historical rate was most appropriate, particularly the BDBV-specific estimate from Hulseberg et al. Encouragingly, the much larger dataset now gives estimates broadly consistent with that range we initially found. 130
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Early in the outbreak, with only 10 genomes available, we explored how published substitution rate estimates affected inferred tMRCA and epidemic growth. virological.org/t/molecular-...virological.orgMolecular evolutionary analysis of the current Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak in DRC and UgandaAuthors: Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg and Mahan Ghafari Note on data use This is an informal analysis and is not intended as a formal preprint or manuscript in its current form. The aim of this post is to p... 121
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Great to see this new preprint on the 2026 BDBV outbreak. Congratulations to the DRC team and everyone involved in generating and analysing a much richer set of genomic data. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...medrxiv.orgTemporal and Phylodynamic analyses of the 2026 Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo is experiencing a major outbreak of Ebola disease caused by Orthoebolavirus bundibugyoense (Bundibugyo virus), which was declared on May 15, 2026. To investigate t... 132
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAnnual Reviews @annualreviews.bsky.social · 06/10/2026The 2026 volume of the Annual Review of Virology is now online. The most read article is "Studying the Deep Evolution of Viruses in the Era of Artificial Intelligence Structure Prediction" by @spyroslytras.bsky.social @mghafari.bsky.social and @grovearmada.bsky.social 👉 arevie.ws/3TnyXnd 055
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 05/10/2026🦠 New Oxford DPhil project with Miles Carroll: Unravelling the true incidence of Lassa fever virus in West Africa. Combining serology+virology+virus evolution to ask whether cross-reactive arenaviruses could explain unexpectedly high Lassa seropositivity in Guinea. www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/study/dphil-...ndm.ox.ac.uk 040
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Most discussions of SARS-CoV-2 immune escape focus on antibodies. But the virus also encounters a diverse and geographically structured landscape of HLA molecules through which T cells recognise infection. I wrote a short piece on this other immune landscape: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...pnas.orgThe other immune landscape of SARS-CoV-2 evolution | PNASThe other immune landscape of SARS-CoV-2 evolution 0111
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAris Katzourakis @ariskatzourakis.bsky.social · 06/08/2026HIV's hidden history: New study reveals much deeper roots stretching back millions of years sciencex.com/news/2026-07...sciencex.comHIV's hidden history: New study reveals much deeper roots stretching back millions of yearsResearchers used to think that HIV and its relatives were pretty recent things, maybe only a few hundred years old. But a growing body of evidence now suggests their history is far more ancient, with ... 22112
Reposted by Mahan GhafariScience X / Phys.org @sciencex.bsky.social · 05/08/2026A recalibrated viral clock places the common ancestor of known African SIV strains at about 1 million years ago, far older than earlier estimates. These dates are model-based, not precise timestamps. doi.org/hcdrbxsciencex.comHIV's hidden history: New study reveals much deeper roots stretching back millions of yearsResearchers used to think that HIV and its relatives were pretty recent things, maybe only a few hundred years old. But a growing body of evidence now suggests their history is far more ancient, with viruses closely related to HIV circulating in primates for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, and the very roots of their family tree perhaps stretching back millions of years. 064
Reposted by Mahan GhafariOxford Biology @biology.ox.ac.uk · 17/07/2026How can we move beyond reading virus genomes as strings of letters on a phylogenetic tree, and instead place those genetic changes in their biological context? 🧬 A blog by @mghafari.bsky.social discusses new ways of thinking about old problems 🦠👇 bit.lyFrom viral histories to protein structures: new directions for understanding virus evolution 052
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/202611/ This is not a universal model for all viruses. It is most useful for viruses where antigenic evolution is measurable and epidemiologically important, such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2, which were the main focus of our review article journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/....journals.asm.orgFrom sites to structure to serology: a roadmap for structure-aware molecular evolution of antigenically evolving viruses | Journal of VirologyAdvances in virus genomics have made it increasingly possible to track evolutionary changes at the population level over the timescales of outbreaks and epidemics (1). Before the current era of large-... 051
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/202610/ But the “prison” is not fixed. As population immunity changes through infection, vaccination, waning, and imprinting, the accessible antigenic landscape can shift too. Viral evolution is constrained, but the constraints themselves move. 151
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/20269/ We connect this to Prisoner of War like dynamics (www.cell.com/current-biol.... The virus explores a constrained antigenic space: it can move, escape, and adapt, but the viable phenotypic space is bounded by receptor binding, stability, glycan shielding, immune history, and epitope geometry.cell.comA mechanistic evolutionary model explains the time-dependent pattern of substitution rates in virusesGhafari et al. develop a predictive mechanistic model that explains the evolutionary process behind the time-dependent rate phenomenon across timescales in viruses. The diversification of hepatitis C ... 151
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/20268/ This looping can happen because back mutations at key epitope sites can make later viruses antigenically resemble older ones, even as overall genetic distance keeps increasing. So the genetic clock and antigenic clock can diverge. 150
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/20265/ Figure 3 looks at influenza A(H3N2) over longer timescales, using the PLANT method (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) Genetic change keeps accumulating, but antigenic evolution does not simply move in a straight line away from the past. Instead, the antigenic trajectory can loop back. 151
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/20264/ In other words, regions where mutations are more tolerated or beneficial are also the regions where we see faster amino-acid turnover through time. And the relationship was clearest within spike subdomains, linking molecular clocks, fitness, and structure. 141
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/20263/ Across SARS-CoV-2 genomic regions, we highlighted regions with higher inferred mutational fitness, using the Bloom and Neher framework, which also tend to show faster nonsynonymous molecular clock like change measured by Hamming distance. 151
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/20262/ The core idea is simple: viral genomes tell us what changed, but not always what those changes do. We propose a conceptual roadmap linking sequence variation, phylogenies, protein structure, serology, ML-based prediction, and epidemiological dynamics to understand antigenic evolution. 150
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/07/20261/ Excited to share our JVI review article with Sanni Översti, @shusukekawakubo.bsky.social, Jumpei Ito, and @antigenevo.bsky.social! From sites to structure to serology: a roadmap for structure-aware molecular evolution of antigenically evolving viruses journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...journals.asm.orgFrom sites to structure to serology: a roadmap for structure-aware molecular evolution of antigenically evolving viruses | Journal of VirologyAdvances in virus genomics have made it increasingly possible to track evolutionary changes at the population level over the timescales of outbreaks and epidemics (1). Before the current era of large-... 1113
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 14/07/2026A long time in the making, and exciting to finally see this work published. We show how the PoW model resolves evolutionary events across vastly different timescales, from the origins of HIV-1 and HIV-2 lineages, through the deeper history of SIVs, to the ancient split between SIV and pSIV and more. 0114
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 14/07/2026Very happy to have been part of this work w/ Spyros Lytras and Joe Grove! New structural prediction tools are opening up exciting possibilities for virus discovery and for reconstructing their deep evolutionary histories, as we explore in our new review article www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...annualreviews.orgStudying the Deep Evolution of Viruses in the Era of Artificial Intelligence Structure PredictionHigh mutation rates erode viral sequence similarity, obscuring deep evolutionary history. While protein structure is far more conserved than sequence, its use in evolutionary studies has historically ... 092
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAntigen Evolution & Design Lab @antigenevo.bsky.social · 14/07/2026First paper with the lab's affiliation!! ✨✨ summarising some of the cool concepts that the Antigen Evolution & Design Lab will be working on! Together with amazing collaborators @mghafari.bsky.social and @grovearmada.bsky.social www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...annualreviews.orgStudying the Deep Evolution of Viruses in the Era of Artificial Intelligence Structure PredictionHigh mutation rates erode viral sequence similarity, obscuring deep evolutionary history. While protein structure is far more conserved than sequence, its use in evolutionary studies has historically ... 1219
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAris Katzourakis @ariskatzourakis.bsky.social · 08/07/2026Completed our work on reconstructing the viral histories of human, simian and prosimian immunodeficiency viruses across multiple evolutionary timescales, with @mghafari.bsky.social & @psimmond.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...royalsocietypublishing.orgReconstructing the viral histories of human, simian and prosimian immunodeficiency viruses across multiple evolutionary timescalesAbstract. The evolutionary history of simian and prosimian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs and pSIVs) remains difficult to resolve, because divergence-time 13714
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAntigen Evolution & Design Lab @antigenevo.bsky.social · 07/07/2026Inaugural post! We are a brand new lab @pasteur.fr studying how pathogen antigens evolve and how we can exploit these proteins' evolution to make better vaccines! Read a few words from the currently sole member of the lab @spyroslytras.bsky.social below! 😁 www.pasteur.fr/en/research-...pasteur.frPredicting viral evolution with AISpyros Lytras is one of four young scientists selected in 2025 to lead new research groups at the Institut Pasteur. He has headed the “Antigen Evolution & Design laboratory” 5-year Group (G5) since Ju... 15117
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 16/06/2026We’ve posted a preliminary molecular evolutionary analysis of the current Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak in DRC and Uganda, using 10 available BDBV genomes to reconstruct outbreak mutations and explore rate-conditioned tMRCA/growth estimates. virological.org/t/molecular-...virological.orgMolecular evolutionary analysis of the current Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak in DRC and UgandaAuthors: Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg and Mahan Ghafari Note on data use This is an informal analysis and is not intended as a formal preprint or manuscript in its current form. The aim of this post is to p... 054
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 23/05/2026Incredibly valuable and timely work by Lissette, Edyth, and colleagues! 031
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAris Katzourakis @ariskatzourakis.bsky.social · 21/05/2026Trying to make sense of the unfolding Hantavirus outbreak from molecular sequence data. Many caveats apply; this is just a post on a blog, not a peer reviewed research paper, but is our attempt to make sense of the data so far and help out. All subject to revision etc. 1187
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 21/05/2026Part 2: molecular clock analysis of lineages leading to the outbreak virological.org/t/molecular-... Huge thanks to everyone generating, sharing, and curating data so rapidly!virological.orgMolecular evolutionary analysis of the lineages leading to the current MV Hondius Andes virus outbreakNote on data use This is an informal analysis and is not intended as a formal preprint or manuscript in its current form. This post focuses on the deeper evolutionary history of the lineage leading to... 071
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 21/05/2026Our two-part analysis of the current MV Hondius Andes virus outbreak is now live, including reconstruction of the outbreak molecular clock dating of the closest known ancestors of the outbreak lineage. Part 1: outbreak sequence reconstruction and rooting virological.org/t/molecular-...virological.orgMolecular evolutionary analysis of the current MV Hondius Andes virus outbreakPreliminary reconstruction of the current MV Hondius Andes virus outbreak sequences Note on data use This is an informal analysis of currently available consensus sequences and is not intended as a fo... 12113
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAsher Leeks @asherleeks.bsky.social · 28/04/2026We're recruiting! We're looking for two graduate students to join us at UBC in Vancouver. Fully funded and open to global applicants, with flexible start-date. Topics include theory, bioinformatics, and microbiology. More details: asherleeks.com/apply #socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪 26889
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAsher Leeks @asherleeks.bsky.social · 14/04/2026The Social Lives of Viruses is coming to Vancouver, Canada, from 4th-8th August 2026! This is a free meeting dedicated to all aspects of virus-virus interactions & evolution. To apply: socialviruses.zoology.ubc.ca @sociovirology.bsky.social #socialviruses #evosky #lovevirology #virosky 06146
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 15/04/2026It was a pleasure to host @systemsvirology.bsky.social at @biology.ox.ac.uk today for a fascinating talk on the origins and phenotypic characteristics of SARS-CoV-2! 192
Reposted by Mahan GhafariEmma Harding @emma-harding.bsky.social · 13/11/2025I'm excited to introduce our new workflow for detecting endogenous viral elements - HI-FEVER. 🖥️🧬 academic.oup.com/bioinformati... 🧵 Big thanks to @ariskatzourakis.bsky.social, @humanceae.bsky.social, José Gabriel and Cormac for bringing this from conception to fruition!academic.oup.comHI-FEVER: a Nextflow pipeline for the high-throughput discovery and annotation of endogenous viral elementsAbstractSummary. Endogenous viral elements (EVEs) offer valuable insights into virus and host evolution, but their detection remains computationally and bi 21610
Reposted by Mahan GhafariOxford Biology @biology.ox.ac.uk · 09/12/2025Congratulations to @mghafari.bsky.social who has been selected as one of the New Voices in Virology! Mahan's research focuses on the evolution of pathogens, particularly those with epidemic or pandemic potential and with implications for human, animal, and plant health 🦠 031
Reposted by Mahan GhafariEd Hutchinson @socialinfluenza.bsky.social · 01/12/2025Feeling festive? Why not deck the halls with @cvrinfo.bsky.social's papercraft #VirusSnowflakes and celebrate the science of viruses and the fight against viral diseases. Download for free: cvr-engagement.co.uk/virus-snowfl... #scicomm #sciart #decorations 48643
Reposted by Mahan GhafariJames Hay @jameshay.bsky.social · 25/11/2025H3N2 preprint: there are concerns of a severe incoming influenza season due to the drifted H3N2 K clade. We at @psioxford.bsky.social analysed epi data and ran scenario models to see what we could discern about K clade transmission dynamics: zenodo.org/records/1770.... (1/18)zenodo.orgEvaluation of the epidemiological outlook of the influenza A/H3N2 clade K in England during the 2025-26 seasonKey findings England is currently experiencing a high growth rate of infections caused by the influenza A/H3N2 K clade. Antigenic change from the previously dominant clade, a rapid selective sweep evi... 12815
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 22/11/2025Excited to be part of this amazing group of virologists! @asm.org journals.asm.org/journal/jvi/...journals.asm.orgNew Voices in VirologyAnnual competition for early-career virologists to publish a minireview in JVI. Their minireviews will be peer reviewed & published in a collection. 040
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 15/11/2025Huge congrats, Spyros! Pasteur is very lucky to have you. 020
Reposted by Mahan GhafariSpyros Lytras @spyroslytras.bsky.social · 15/11/2025Guess the news is officially out! Extremely excited to announce that I will be starting my own laboratory at Institut Pasteur @pasteur.fr this coming spring! Slight change to my office window view from Tokyo Tower🗼 to the Tour Eiffel. 🇫🇷 2811211
Reposted by Mahan GhafariAsher Leeks @asherleeks.bsky.social · 07/10/2025I gave a talk last year at TEDxNewEngland aimed at introducing the idea of viral sociality to a general audience, including implications for evolution & virology. Video now available online below. #socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪youtube.comThe social lives of viruses | Asher Leeks | TEDxNewEnglandYouTube video by TEDx Talks 04517
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 31/10/2025Had an absolutely wonderful few days at #JSV72 in Hamamatsu & IMSUT in Tokyo. Huge thanks to @shusukekawakubo.bsky.social, @shigeru0701.bsky.social, @spyroslytras.bsky.social & everyone in the @systemsvirology.bsky.social lab for being such brilliant hosts. Japan has been an amazing experience 🇯🇵✨ 092
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 25/10/2025🚨 DPhil opportunity at Pandemic Sciences Institute🚨 Excited to be co-supervising a new DPhil theme with Christophe Fraser and Yvonne Jones on Developing methods for accurate reconstruction of viral histories to guide pandemic preparedness & targeted interventions. Read more here: lnkd.in/eJXSXkialnkd.inLinkedInThis link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn 020
Reposted by Mahan GhafariRoyal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 14/10/2025We are thrilled to welcome the members of our new Early Career Researcher Advisory Panel! Discover more about the researchers who are helping shape the future of scientific communication: buff.ly/5abtNWQ #ECR 🧪 1154
Reposted by Mahan GhafariContagion® @contagionlive.bsky.social · 11/09/2025“Fast change, little spread” The University of Oxford’s Prof Katrina Lythgoe and Dr. Mahan Ghafari unpack ONS-CIS data on 576 persistent infections, rapid within-host evolution, and rare transmission after 1 month. #IDsky #MEDsky Read our Q&A: www.contagionlive.com/view/persist...contagionlive.comPersistent SARS-CoV-2 Infections in the Community Show Fast Within-Host Change but Little Late TransmissionOxford’s Prof Katrina Lythgoe and Mahan Ghafari, DPhil, report ONS-CIS data on 576 persistent UK infections with rapid within-host evolution and rare transmission after one month. 185
Mahan Ghafari @mghafari.bsky.social · 28/08/2025how is the syn vs nonsyn MOV context score/likelihood calculated in these cases? 100