Wael Kamel

Congratulations, alot of cool stuff coming out :)

Uncovering the viral aetiology of undiagnosed acute febrile illness in Uganda using metagenomic sequencing - Nature Communications Acute febrile illness is common in sub-Saharan Africa and causative agents are often unknown. Here, the authors perform metagenomic sequencing on samples from patients with acute febrile illness in Ug...

New in Nature Comms: We applied metagenomic + targeted NGS to serum from febrile patients in Uganda. Post-COVID, LMICs have sequencing infrastructure that could be repurposed for pathogen discovery.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Public health Our recent highlights in the field of public health, including epidemiological studies investigating the social, environmental, genetic, and behavioural ...

🎉 We are very excited to have our recent @naturecomms.bsky.social publication chosen to be featured on a Editors’ Highlights webpage specific to public health.

www.nature.com/collections/...

@emcat1.bsky.social & Shirin Ashraf

Congratulations Shabaz, Yana and the whole team! 🎉

Bird flu cases surging in UK but risk to humans remains low Restrictions have recently been put in place in England and Scotland to curb the spread of bird flu.

What's going on with bird flu in the UK at the moment? I wrote a piece for @uk.theconversation.com explaining what we know at the moment, and why it's not yet time to worry
theconversation.com/bird-flu-cas...

🦸 Hidden superheroes in our cells!?

@waelskamel.bsky.social, @castello-lab.bsky.social & the Rosalind Franklin Institute have uncovered how a team of cellular “superheroes” leap into action to stop viruses in their tracks.

More: gla.ac.uk/research/az/...
The study: cell.com/molecular-ce...

Cake time!!! We literally ate our model!! and ...it is delicious😋

Thanks Ilan 😊

Alphavirus infection triggers selective cytoplasmic translocation of nuclear RBPs with moonlighting antiviral roles Kamel et al. apply complementary approaches to elucidate the composition of Sindbis virus ribonucleoproteins. They identified a subset of nuclear proteins that selectively translocate to the cytoplasm, interact with viral RNA, and suppress virus infection. Among them, U2 snRNP emerges as a ribonucleoprotein complex with moonlighting antiviral activity.

Nuclear RBPs moonlighting in the cytoplasm as part of the host response to Sindbis virus. Another beautiful work by Alfredo Castelo’s group. I’m struggling to keep up with reading all the amazing papers they’ve published in the last few months.

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Thanks Mehdi 😊!

Alphavirus infection triggers selective cytoplasmic translocation of nuclear RBPs with moonlighting antiviral roles Kamel et al. apply complementary approaches to elucidate the composition of Sindbis virus ribonucleoproteins. They identified a subset of nuclear proteins that selectively translocate to the cytoplasm, interact with viral RNA, and suppress virus infection. Among them, U2 snRNP emerges as a ribonucleoprotein complex with moonlighting antiviral activity.

I am delighted that our long standing close collaboration with AlfredoCastello lab has led to yet another very exciting publication in Mol Cell: thanks so much to Wael and Alfredo for taking the lead.

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Thanks Sara! 😊

Thanks Ed! 😊

Thanks Shabaz, It has been quite a journey😊

Finally, it has been invaluable experience to co-lead this project with my amazing mentors @Alf_Castello and @shabazlab.bsky.social who showed me the beauty of integrating RNA biology with proteomics to explore the hidden aspects of virus infection.

This work would not have been possible without the excellent team work and collaboration especially members of @castello_lab
/@CVRinfo
and @shabazlab.bsky.social

Among these proteins, the U2 snRNP including U2 snRNA appears to assemble on the viral RNA and inhibit viral replication in U2 snRNA -dependent manner.

Additional data shows that these relocalised nuclear proteins can be found in proximity of virus replication centers in the cytoplasm

Subcellular fractionation and proteomics shows 1) these nuclear proteins relocalise to the cytoplasm upon infection and 2) Viral RNA is their main destination

It is all started with the observation that some strictly nuclear proteins, with no known cytoplasmic function, interact with cytoplasmic viral RNA during SINV infection.

Alphavirus infection triggers selective cytoplasmic translocation of nuclear RBPs with moonlighting antiviral roles Kamel et al. apply complementary approaches to elucidate the composition of Sindbis virus ribonucleoproteins. They identified a subset of nuclear proteins that selectively translocate to the cytoplasm, interact with viral RNA, and suppress virus infection. Among them, U2 snRNP emerges as a ribonucleoprotein complex with moonlighting antiviral activity.

Super happy to have this as my first post"It is finally OUT!! After a pandemic, lab moving across the country!, 1+year under review and >120 panels later. 🧵"
www.cell.com/molecular-ce...