Date: 28-29 March 2019
Location Glasgow, United Kingdom
The meeting focused on bioinformatics approaches in virology, in particular systems virology; virus-host interactions and the virome; virus classification and evolution; and epidemiology, surveillance and evolution.

During the two day meeting, about 110 participants from 20 countries gave their time and resources to attend and to contribute in many stimulating talks, productive breaks and fruitful discussions. We thank all participants for making this meeting a success and we would like to give special thanks to the speakers, invited and selected, all of them giving very interesting and high-quality talks.
Invited Talks by
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Organizing Committee
The meeting was jointly organised by the EVBC and the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research.
Awardees
PhD Travel Award: Kevin Lamkiewicz
Best Newcomer Talk Award: Jenna Kelly
Best Poster Award: Adam Dinan
Special Issues Virus Bioinformatics in Viruses
Simultaneously to the meeting, we have published a special issue on Virus Bioinformatics in Viruses.
Programme
Thursday, March 28th09.05 am | Registration opens |
09.30 am | Welcome | David Robertson & Manja Marz |
Morning Session: Systems virology, chair: Philippe Le Mercier | |
09.45 am | Determination of host proteins composing the microenvironment of coronavirus replicase complexes | Volker Thiel |
10.15 am | Co-infection between Staphylococcus aureus and influenza virus reduces endothelial barrier function | Stefanie Deinhardt-Emmer |
10.45 am | Coffee break |
11.30 am | Single cell analysis of influenza virus infection in its natural target cells reveals cell type-specific host responses and disparate viral burden | Jenna Nicole Kell Kelly |
11.50 am | scSLAM-seq and GRAND-SLAM reveal core features of CMV-induced regulation in single cells | Florian Erhard |
12.10 am | In depth transcriptomic analysis reveals a balance between NS1 protein expression and defective viral genomes in influenza A virus infection | Daniel Blanco Melo |
12.30 pm | Lunch break |
Afternoon Session: Virus-host interactions and the virome, chair: David Robertson | |
02.00 pm | Roles of phages in impacting infectious diseases in human microbiomes’ | Martha Clokie |
02.30 pm | Global phylogeography and ancient evolution of the widespread human gut virus crAssphage | Bas Dutilh |
03.00 pm | Coffee break |
03.40 pm | Identification of viral transcripts in RNA-seq datasets from bees, mites and ants | Katherine Brown |
04.00 pm | Genome-resolved metaviromics for the detection of pathogenic viruses in the environment: will eating shellfish make you ill? | Evelien Adriaenssens |
04.20 pm | Codon Usage Preference Similarity Among Human-Infecting Viruses and Their Hosts | Josquin Daron |
05.00 pm | Posters & Reception @ Glasgow University Union |
07.00 pm | Close |
Morning Session: Virus classification and evolution, chair: Darren Obbard | |
09.30 am | The classification of viruses in metagenomic datasets – where do you draw the line? | Pete Simmonds |
10.00 am | Learning on viruses | Manja Marz |
10.30 am | Coffee break |
11.15 am | Detecting viruses in ancient human remains | Julian Susat |
11.35 am | Virosphere and biosphere – how related they are? A protein (domain) based view | Aare Abroi |
11.55 am | RNA secondary structures in whole genome alignments of viruses | Kevin Lamkiewicz |
12.15 pm | Lunch break |
Afternoon Session: Epidemiology, surveillance & evolution, chair: Ed Hutchinson | |
01.30 pm | Phylodynamics for tracking epidemic, endemic and evolving viral strains | Samantha Lycett |
02.00 pm | Leveraging pathogen genomics to reveal and control the spread of rabies virus | Roman Biek |
02.30 pm | Coffee break |
03.10 pm | Parallel evolution and the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza A viruses | Marina Escalera-Zamudio |
03.30 pm | The structure of the influenza A virus genome | David Bauer |
03.50 pm | Evolutionary origins of epidemic potential among human RNA viruses | Lu Lu |
04.10 pm | Discussion & EVBC roundup |
05.00 pm | Close |
List of posters
- In silico prediction of conserved RNA elements of the MERS-CoV RNA genome. | Bader Alhatlani | Qassim University, Saudi Arabia
- Less is more: enhanced regulation of a restricted number of genes is the hallmark of influenza A virus adaptation to mammals. | Julien Amat | Glasgow University, United Kingdom
- Investigating Virus Diversity in Humans and Non-Human Animals in Vietnam. | Jordan Ashworth | University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Molecular Tracing of Hepatitis C Virus Genotype 1 isolates in Nigeria: 2000-2018. | Elukunbi Awoyelu | Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Nigeria
- Computational prediction of linear b-cell epitopes. | Akash Bahai | HZI, Germany
- The Structure of the Influenza A Virus Genome. | David Bauer | University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- Quantification of gut viral populations in metagenomes: opportunities and challenges. | Miguelangel Cuenca Vera | ETH Zurich, Switzerland
- Phylogenetic and genomic characterisation of narnaviruses: a diverse group of non-encapsidated RNA viruses. | Adam M. Dinan | University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Using next-gen sequencing for insect pollinator epidemiology and virus discovery. | Vincent Doublet | University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Global phylogeography and ancient evolution of the widespread human gut virus crAssphage. | Bas E. Dutilh | Utrecht University, Netherlands
- scSLAM-seq and GRAND-SLAM reveal core features of CMV-induced regulation in single cells. | Florian Erhard | University of Würzburg, Germany
- Ribosome profiling and RNA virus gene expression. | Andrew Firth | University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Investigating Africa’s contribution to the global spread of H5Nx highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses. | Alice Fusaro | Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, Italy
- Profile HMMs as auxiliary tools for the taxonomic classification of viruses: a case study using Spounarivinae phages. | Arthur Gruber | University of São Paulo, Brazil
- The evolutionary dynamics of Oropouche Virus (OROV) in South America. | Bernardo Gutierrez | University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- Microviridae of the human gut. | Ross Holohan | APC Microbiome Ireland, Ireland
- Virus- and interferon alpha-induced transcriptomes of the microbat Myotis daubentonii. | Martin Hölzer | Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
- Nanopore direct RNA sequencing reveals modification in full-length coronavirus genomes. | Sebastian Krautwurst | Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
- Virosaurus, a virus database for clinical metagenomics. | Philippe Le Mercier | Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland
- Phylogeny-based Classification of Tailed dsDNA Viruses. | Soo Jen Low | The University of Queensland, Australia
- Species Specific Determinants of Marburgvirus Virulence. | Stuart Masterson | University of Kent, United Kingdom
- Longitudinal analysis of upper respiratory metagenomes in children with asthma. | Spyridon, Akis Megremis | University of Manchester, United Kingdom
- Is the Bombali virus pathogenic in humans? | Martin Michaelis | University of Kent, United Kingdom
- gEVE database provides possibly protein-coding sequences that are similar to viruses in 20 mammalian genomes. | So Nakagawa | Tokai University School of Medicine, Japan
- A (possible) new family of RNA viruses identified from small-RNAs. | Darren Obbard | University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Genomic epidemiology informs about the mechanisms of bluetongue virus serotype 8 emergence and spread in Europe. | David Pascall | University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
- Detection of plant viruses and viroids using two high-throughput sequencing technologies: MinION (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) versus MiSeq (Illumina platform). | Anja Pecman | National Institute of Biology, Slovenia
- Viral metagenomics in irrigation waters. | Alba Pérez-Cataluña | Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology, Spain
- Interpreting viral deep sequencing data with GLUE. | Joshua Singer | MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, United Kingdom
- Exploring the known virus-host infection landscape. | Ben Stamp | University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
- Choice of assembly software has a critical impact on virome characterisation. | Thomas Sutton | APC Microbiome Ireland, Cork, Ireland
- Identifying determinants of Ebolavirus pathogenicity. | Mark Wass | University of Kent, United Kingdom
- Intra-host and intra-population Sequence Diversity of pH1N1 and Associated Clinical Outcomes. | Hadi Yassine | Qatar University, Qatar
- Virome characterization in field vs. lab ticks. | Neta Zuckerman | Israel Ministry of Health, Sheba Medical Center, Israel