Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
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edrybicki.bsky.social
Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
@edrybicki.bsky.social
Semi-retired biotechnologist and virologist, interested in making vaccines, lover of 70s rock and hard SF. And good red wine. Posts are both personal and professional, and may include music and/or strong opinions. And possibly zombies.
Pinned
"Cann's Principles of Molecular Virology 7th Edition revised extensively by Ed Rybicki, is an easily accessible introduction to modern virology, presenting principles in a clear and concise manner."

**Selected for Doody’s Core Titles® 2024 in Microbiology**
www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128...
Cann's Principles of Molecular Virology
**Selected for Doody’s Core Titles® 2024 in Microbiology**Cann's Principles of Molecular Virology, Seventh Edition provides an easily access...
www.sciencedirect.com
Oui, Wordle 1,702 4/6, c’est splendide!

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February 15, 2026 at 6:02 PM
I endorse that placard down to the right.
February 15, 2026 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
This is really beautiful work
I am excited to share our latest preprint - An evolutionarily divergent herpesvirus with a giant tail. Featuring symmetry breaking and genome annotation from structure using ModelAngelo. doi.org/10.64898/202...
February 14, 2026 at 5:24 PM
Thought for Today:

Roses are red
Dead children are blue
Shunning vaccines
Can do that to you….
February 14, 2026 at 8:58 AM
Oh, come on! Minnie, is it??Wordle 1,700 6/6

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February 13, 2026 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
This is such a fun thread on a conceptual head twister of a paper. Bold hypothesis and clever selection scheme. Kudos to the authors!
How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?

Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
1/n
A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand
The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...
www.science.org
February 13, 2026 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
This is incredibly cool
How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?

Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
1/n
A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand
The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...
www.science.org
February 13, 2026 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
Greek mythology @edrybicki.bsky.social style
February 13, 2026 at 2:58 PM
Just finished "Stormland" by John Shirley @johnshirley2024.bsky.social. SERIOUSLY good - but bleak as fuck. You read!
February 13, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
Polyomaviruses are masters of persistence and dissemination: we show there are two forms of long-term persistent PyVs in the kidney: the majority being cryptic (non-shedding) and a minority that actively shed, and these fates are determined shortly after infection.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
February 13, 2026 at 1:31 PM
Oh, I DO like Sir Terry’s turns of phrase!
Discworld QOTD, from Wyrd Sisters
February 13, 2026 at 1:49 PM
There you are, @cooks4luv.bsky.social!
February 13, 2026 at 1:25 PM
I think that calls for a little celebration? 😁
February 13, 2026 at 12:17 PM
It only took 48 years to sort out this little issue...my Zambian passport extended in validity by one month, and then 3 years, because of the refusal of British authorities to recognise matrilineal entitlement to being British. Thanks, Mum! It finally came through 😁
February 13, 2026 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
So NA suddenly looks like a good subunit vaccine target for flu - and especially H5N1?? Nice!
Population immunity to clade 2.3.4.4b H5N1 is dominated by anti-neuraminidase
antibodies

«we determined that human sera contain widespread, functional antibodies targeting H5N1 neuraminidase, which correlate with virus neutralization…»

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

#H5N1
February 13, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
Actual demo 10-40% sucrose gradient separation by ultracentrifugation of three viruses in 1982. I did SO many of these...!
February 12, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Mementos.... I had a Ché poster on my wall in the Upper VI dormitory in 1973.
February 12, 2026 at 7:56 PM
Awwwww...! Layla, also of fond memory, as a pup in 2014.
February 12, 2026 at 7:47 PM
Suzy, of fond memory, having a tummy rub in 2014 😢
February 12, 2026 at 7:45 PM
Ah, now; who can interpret this?? Actual Ouchterlony test, with anti-BMV serum (centre) against 3 wells of virus, 1 of PBS, and 1 of isolated coat protein! Ed Rybicki, MSc dissertation, 1979.
February 12, 2026 at 7:42 PM
I used to use this as a lecture slide: I think it's very apposite, here and now....I
February 12, 2026 at 7:33 PM