This month’s story comes from the Bloom lab using their signature deep mutational scanning technique to identify mutations in the surface protein of Lassa virus -called glycoprotein- that escape ...

Early in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists predicted the coronavirus would mutate slowly. They were wrong. Hundreds of thousands of viral mutations and multiple seasonal waves later, ...

The patient in Louisiana who was hospitalized with severe bird flu illness was found to have a mutated version of the virus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced last ...

Helen Branswell covers issues broadly related to infectious diseases, including outbreaks, preparedness, research, and vaccine development. Follow her on Mastodon and Bluesky. You can reach Helen on ...

The study, published in the Biophysical Journal, was led by a team of researchers from the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Hartree Centre and IBM, at the Hartree National Centre for ...

A recent scientific article suggested that the novel coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 epidemic has mutated into a more "aggressive" form. Is this something we need to worry about? No, and here ...

Researchers have developed EVE-Vax, a computational design tool that creates synthetic SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins mimicking future immune-evading variants. These designed proteins enable early ...

A study published in PLOS PATHOGENS describes the prevalence and functions of mutations in neuraminidase enzyme of avian H5N1 influenza viruses that are preferentially selected in human H5N1 influenza ...

Editor’s Note (1/6/25): The Louisiana Department of Health has announced that the patient in the state who had been hospitalized with severe H5N1 avian influenza has died. The individual had ...

Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. At least 58 people in the U.S. have been infected by the H5N1 bird flu virus this year, according to federal statistics. All but ...

Researchers in Japan have uncovered the mechanism for how the measles virus (MeV) can cause subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE, a rare but fatal neurological disorder that can occur several ...

Scientists have discovered that H5N1, the strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus currently spreading in U.S. dairy cows, only needs a single mutation to readily latch on to human cells ...