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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · 21d

Reposting for #VirEvol

Michelle Wille @duckswabber.bsky.social · Mar 2

Antigenic map of H5 influenza viruses spanning their evolutionary history. 3 clusters (surprisingly few!) w no cross immunity. 6 key aa identified. 2344b, 2321a, 2344h in different clusters. Big jump in antigenicity from 234 to 2344b important finding.
👉 www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · 29d

Proud moment to see the first Master student of the team (Lotte Mayer) successfully defend her Master's thesis work digging into viral factories of #giantViruses.

A link to part of her work:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

@erc.europa.eu @univie.ac.at @cemess.bsky.social @dome-vienna.bsky.social

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Aug 26

Last week #ESEB2025 wrapped up. It was a great opportunity to chat with colleagues, hear about great evolutionary research, present the group's work, and be a proud PI of Laura, who did a great job presenting her PhD work! Two years to go until next ESEB!

@eseb2025.bsky.social

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Reposted by Anouk Willemsen

Karolin Luger @nucleosomepolice.bsky.social · Jul 26

our paper is online! rdcu.be/exXBX . Who would have thought that some #giantviruses not only have #histones, but even histone variants that make weird #nucleosomes (pdb 9CVT). Fantastic work from Ale Villalta and Chelsea Toner, with Hugo Bisio @molbiolgv.bsky.social and Chantal Abergel

Melbournevirus encodes a shorter H2B-H2A doublet histone variant that forms structurally distinct nucleosome structures

Nature Communications - Melbournevirus encodes a conserved shorter H2B-H2A doublet variant. Here the authors report a cryo-EM structure of a nucleosome-like particle reconstituted with viral H4-H3...

rdcu.be

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Jul 14

Heat Shock Protein 70 (AKA HSP70) in Mimiviridae and Phycodnaviridae likely originated from horizontal transfer from their protist hosts. By @sfelena.bsky.social & @amaachi.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

#giantVirus #VirEvol

Multiple origins, one function: evolutionary pathways of HSP70 proteins in viruses

Heat shock proteins 70 (HSP70) are highly conserved molecular chaperones found across all domains of life, where they play essential roles in cellular stress responses. While HSP70 homologs have been ...

doi.org

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Jun 13

Out now in its final peer-reviewed form @asm.org's Journal of Virology!

doi.org/10.1128/jvi....

@dome-vienna.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu @amersocvirology.bsky.social

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · May 8

Thanks for the comment! Originally we did write BONCAT in our manuscript. With your comment as support we might still be able to change it back in the final version.

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · May 8

When transported outside of the viral factory, the translation of viral mRNA takes place in a well-defined ring surrounding it. We expect these methods to be widely applicable to other viruses for the visualisation and quantification of RNA molecules.

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · May 8

While viral mRNA localisation changes depending on the infection stage, transcription occurs at well-defined spots within the viral factory. The original viral cores released within the cytoplasm most likely define these spots.

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · May 8

Combined with other labelling techniques, we show the #Mimivirus transcription and translation sites during an infection cycle in the amoeba host cell.

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · May 8

New work out!

Spearheaded by Lotte, we have developed a single-molecule messenger RNA fluorescence in situ hybridisation (smFISH) protocol for #giantViruses in an #Acanthamoeba host.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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#ProtistsOnSky #MicroSky @dome-vienna.bsky.social @cemess.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu

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Reposted by Anouk Willemsen

Karolin Luger @nucleosomepolice.bsky.social · Jan 16

by now you probably know that #giantviruses have #histones, but some also have histone variants! Check out our latest preprint on an essential H2B-H2A histone variant in Melbournevirus - a fantastic collaboration with the Abergel Lab, spearheaded by Ale Villalta. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Anouk Willemsen

Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · Jan 10

Pacmanvirus isolated from the Lost City hydrothermal field extends the concept of transpoviron beyond the family Mimiviridae academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #jcampubs

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Reposted by Anouk Willemsen

fischerlab.bsky.social @fischerlab.bsky.social · Dec 9

Looking for a postdoc in environmental virology? Fascinated by giant viruses and their glycobiology?
We have a position available at the MPI for Marine Microbiology!
@mpimarinemicrobio.bsky.social @maxplanck.de
career.mpi-bremen.de/jobposting/8...

Post-Doc Protist Viruses

career.mpi-bremen.de

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Dec 1

Don't forget the #giantVirus tag! With it, it will get collected in the Giant virus feed

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Nov 12

🖐️

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Nov 10

also @rubengonzalez.bsky.social @sfelena.bsky.social

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Nov 10

🖐️

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Nov 10

Reposting for #VirEvol and #giantViruses

Jesse Erasmus @jesseerasmus.bsky.social · Nov 10

Couldn’t find a virology starter pack so here’s one to get the ball rolling. Repost/reply if you are a virologist so I can find and add you to the list!

go.bsky.app/SinqoJU

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Reposted by Anouk Willemsen

Karolin Luger @nucleosomepolice.bsky.social · Nov 5

there is a new #giantvirus in town! and it speaks Finnish! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genomic and structural insights into Jyvaskylavirus, the first giant virus isolated from Finland

Giant viruses of protists are a diverse and likely ubiquitous group of organisms. Here, we describe Jyvaskylavirus, the first giant virus isolated from Finland. This clade B marseillevirus was found i...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Anouk Willemsen

Karolin Luger @nucleosomepolice.bsky.social · Oct 23

behold our paper on Medusavirus nucleosomes. Fantastic work by Chelsea Toner, @nhoitsma.bsky.social, and Sashi Weerawarana This giant virus also encodes a linker histone, more about that in the paper 🧪👩‍🔬 🧵.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Oct 25

Finally, by analyzing the new amoebal genomes, we discovered viral integrations (potentially from GVs) into some of them, indicating historical infections. Most notably some inserted major capsid proteins seem to potentially encode for intact proteins (work in progress)...

Read and enjoy!

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Oct 25

They encode few to complete tRNA sets and even genes from the translational machinery (e.g. tRNA--ligases). The host immune system may also play a role, driving viral codon usage away from its own. Moreover, its replication site (nuclear vs. cytoplasmatic) could also play a role.

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Oct 25

We sequenced high-quality genomes of protists known as hosts of giant viruses (GVs).

Matching of codon usage preferences is often used to predict virus-host pairs. Our analyses revealed that in GVs, codon usage alone is a poor predictor of known pairs.

Why? well, GVs have complex genomes...

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Anouk Willemsen @willemsenanouk.bsky.social · Oct 25

We sequenced some new #genomes!

Novel high-quality #amoeba genomes reveal widespread #codonUsage mismatch between #giantViruses and their hosts.

doi.org/10.1101/2024...

#ProtistsOnSky #MicroSky 🖥️🧬

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