Gytis Dudas
@evogytis.bsky.social
PI @ Vilnius University Life Sciences Center 🦠🧬🌳🌍🐾📈.
Enthusiast of orthomyxos (& other (-)ssRNA viruses), RNA virus discovery, evolution & ecology, genomic epidemiology, data-vis, matplotlib.
EMBO installation grantee.
evogytis.github.io
Enthusiast of orthomyxos (& other (-)ssRNA viruses), RNA virus discovery, evolution & ecology, genomic epidemiology, data-vis, matplotlib.
EMBO installation grantee.
evogytis.github.io
EMBO Young Scientists Forum 2025 in Vilnius wrapped up today. Huge thanks to fellow organisers, volunteer teams, @itaiyanai.bsky.social for a wonderful Night Science workshop & all speakers & attendees. Here's fellow organiser Stephen Jones taking YSF attendee entertainment to the next level.
September 26, 2025 at 7:29 PM
EMBO Young Scientists Forum 2025 in Vilnius wrapped up today. Huge thanks to fellow organisers, volunteer teams, @itaiyanai.bsky.social for a wonderful Night Science workshop & all speakers & attendees. Here's fellow organiser Stephen Jones taking YSF attendee entertainment to the next level.
Indrė, as a data sciences MSc, has done an excellent job at collating sequence & predictor data for a BEAST GLM, even teaching me a few things along the way. Our results implicate (weakly) cattle trade & short distance (shared land border and intra-continental) migrations in moving flu D around. 2/6
September 22, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Indrė, as a data sciences MSc, has done an excellent job at collating sequence & predictor data for a BEAST GLM, even teaching me a few things along the way. Our results implicate (weakly) cattle trade & short distance (shared land border and intra-continental) migrations in moving flu D around. 2/6
My MSc student Indrė Blagnytė has a #preprint up on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on influenza D virus: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Flu D was discovered back in 2011, mostly circulating in cattle. Despite lots of research, a comprehensive analysis of its phylogeography had been missing. 1/6
September 22, 2025 at 12:42 PM
My MSc student Indrė Blagnytė has a #preprint up on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on influenza D virus: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Flu D was discovered back in 2011, mostly circulating in cattle. Despite lots of research, a comprehensive analysis of its phylogeography had been missing. 1/6
Last week we had a 3-day lab retreat at Vilnius University's base in Puvočiai with Lander de Coninck & @ingrida.bsky.social joining us as visitors. These retreats keep getting better & more productive thanks to the students & especially fellow PI @mgabrielaite.bsky.social. I'm super proud!
August 28, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Last week we had a 3-day lab retreat at Vilnius University's base in Puvočiai with Lander de Coninck & @ingrida.bsky.social joining us as visitors. These retreats keep getting better & more productive thanks to the students & especially fellow PI @mgabrielaite.bsky.social. I'm super proud!
This is quite late but our lab has a preprint out about a SARS-CoV-2 situation we had in mink in Lithuania back in 2021. It's a doozy with re-emergence of extinct lineages, a country-wide test of all mink farms in Lithuania & some interesting dynamics in mink. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/5🧵
July 17, 2025 at 8:44 AM
This is quite late but our lab has a preprint out about a SARS-CoV-2 situation we had in mink in Lithuania back in 2021. It's a doozy with re-emergence of extinct lineages, a country-wide test of all mink farms in Lithuania & some interesting dynamics in mink. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/5🧵
The Vilnius University team (myself & PhD student @emremertasar.bsky.social) are on our way to #RdRpSummit2025 & #ViBioM2025 in Lisbon. Looking forward to sharing some of my ramblings & seeing folks! Come find us if you have Wuhan mosquito virus 6 or Culex mosquito virus 4 sequences 🙂
May 10, 2025 at 5:13 PM
The Vilnius University team (myself & PhD student @emremertasar.bsky.social) are on our way to #RdRpSummit2025 & #ViBioM2025 in Lisbon. Looking forward to sharing some of my ramblings & seeing folks! Come find us if you have Wuhan mosquito virus 6 or Culex mosquito virus 4 sequences 🙂
We're looking for a PhD student to join us at Vilnius University in Lithuania. We work on RNA virus evolution computationally but we'd like to generate more mosquito RNA virus sequence data. Official ad: www.gmc.vu.lt/en/doctoral-.... Please share & continue reading if interested.
April 3, 2025 at 5:46 AM
We're looking for a PhD student to join us at Vilnius University in Lithuania. We work on RNA virus evolution computationally but we'd like to generate more mosquito RNA virus sequence data. Official ad: www.gmc.vu.lt/en/doctoral-.... Please share & continue reading if interested.
Vilnius University students are awesome - last week they wrapped up The COINS, a student-organised conference for which they got both Nobel & IgNobel prize winners as speakers. Very proud of everyone & particularly my student Aistė Židonytė who was the executive project manager for the conference.
March 24, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Vilnius University students are awesome - last week they wrapped up The COINS, a student-organised conference for which they got both Nobel & IgNobel prize winners as speakers. Very proud of everyone & particularly my student Aistė Židonytė who was the executive project manager for the conference.
My PhD student Emre Mert Asar stumbled upon something interesting. Apparently there's a chuvirus (group of bizarre (-)ssRNA viruses discovered 10 years ago with supposedly highly variable genome organisations) found in ticks in China that causes human disease: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1...
March 14, 2025 at 7:38 AM
My PhD student Emre Mert Asar stumbled upon something interesting. Apparently there's a chuvirus (group of bizarre (-)ssRNA viruses discovered 10 years ago with supposedly highly variable genome organisations) found in ticks in China that causes human disease: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1...
Heading back after a wonderful #VGEB24. Couldn't be happier having seen my favourite people again & being able to give my lab members an opportunity to see cutting edge science firsthand. Hope I can return in 2 years to deliver on my exquisite data vis promise. The last night was quite the blur!
November 9, 2024 at 4:25 PM
Heading back after a wonderful #VGEB24. Couldn't be happier having seen my favourite people again & being able to give my lab members an opportunity to see cutting edge science firsthand. Hope I can return in 2 years to deliver on my exquisite data vis promise. The last night was quite the blur!
Very excited to be travelling to #VGEB24! I gave an overhyped talk at the 1st VGE (thanks, Ebola animation) then missed 3 meetings & now I'm back to talk (Thu 7 Nov) about Wuhan mosquito virus 6 (WuMV-6). Members of my lab (Aistė Židonytė & Martynas Smičius) will also present posters. Come see us!
November 5, 2024 at 2:15 PM
Very excited to be travelling to #VGEB24! I gave an overhyped talk at the 1st VGE (thanks, Ebola animation) then missed 3 meetings & now I'm back to talk (Thu 7 Nov) about Wuhan mosquito virus 6 (WuMV-6). Members of my lab (Aistė Židonytė & Martynas Smičius) will also present posters. Come see us!
There's Wuhan mosquito virus 6 (WuMV-6) news from our lab! We got some sequences from Lithuanian mosquitoes & it looks like WuMV-6 here is related to the divergent lineage from Sweden which is interesting in the context of some hypotheses we have about this virus. 1/2
#VirEvol
#EvolSky
#MicroSky
#VirEvol
#EvolSky
#MicroSky
May 13, 2024 at 11:54 AM
Very proud to share my very first book written together with Alli Black! It covers the principles & considerations of genomic epidemiology as well as real-world examples. We hope it'll prove a useful teaching resource for the field. Psst... the free version lives here: alliblk.github.io/genepi-book/
March 22, 2024 at 5:17 PM
Very proud to share my very first book written together with Alli Black! It covers the principles & considerations of genomic epidemiology as well as real-world examples. We hope it'll prove a useful teaching resource for the field. Psst... the free version lives here: alliblk.github.io/genepi-book/
Meanwhile, greetings from my holiday in Colombia! It's not even been a week and we've already had plenty of adventures with even more adventures coming up 🌎🚙
March 6, 2024 at 8:29 PM
Meanwhile, greetings from my holiday in Colombia! It's not even been a week and we've already had plenty of adventures with even more adventures coming up 🌎🚙
Following Rob Gifford's seminar we went to one of Vilnius' secret gems - San Diego, the bar with the best tacos in town, if not country. It was also a great excuse for my slowly expanding lab to get together and hang out in a less formal environment which I appreciated a lot.
March 6, 2024 at 8:27 PM
Following Rob Gifford's seminar we went to one of Vilnius' secret gems - San Diego, the bar with the best tacos in town, if not country. It was also a great excuse for my slowly expanding lab to get together and hang out in a less formal environment which I appreciated a lot.
I'd like to offer a late but sincere thanks to Rob Gifford, one of the pioneers of paleovirology, who visited Vilnius University's Life Sciences Center and gave a seminar last week.
Thanks for the talk and the discussions. I hope to see you on Bluesky in the near future!
Thanks for the talk and the discussions. I hope to see you on Bluesky in the near future!
March 6, 2024 at 8:23 PM
I'd like to offer a late but sincere thanks to Rob Gifford, one of the pioneers of paleovirology, who visited Vilnius University's Life Sciences Center and gave a seminar last week.
Thanks for the talk and the discussions. I hope to see you on Bluesky in the near future!
Thanks for the talk and the discussions. I hope to see you on Bluesky in the near future!
We finish with a forecast of orthomyxovirus diversity discovery. We know RNA virus diversity must be finite but can we detect decreasing novelty of newly discovered orthomyxoviruses? The answer looks to be yes but many very novel-looking members also seem to be waiting for discovery.
February 19, 2024 at 11:56 AM
We finish with a forecast of orthomyxovirus diversity discovery. We know RNA virus diversity must be finite but can we detect decreasing novelty of newly discovered orthomyxoviruses? The answer looks to be yes but many very novel-looking members also seem to be waiting for discovery.
WuMV-6 belongs to a wider group of orthomyxoviruses we've found to have a genome comprised of 8 segments (nearest relatives have 7) which is mosquito-associated and which seems to have surface proteins (gp64) that exhibit some funky evolution (also vertebrate infecting?).
February 19, 2024 at 11:55 AM
WuMV-6 belongs to a wider group of orthomyxoviruses we've found to have a genome comprised of 8 segments (nearest relatives have 7) which is mosquito-associated and which seems to have surface proteins (gp64) that exhibit some funky evolution (also vertebrate infecting?).
We observe very fast WuMV-6 migration rates (e.g. covering the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean in the last ~20 years) and higher rates of non-synonymous evolution in its surface protein. This and some other evidence point to a vertebrate playing a role in its transmission cycle!
February 19, 2024 at 11:55 AM
We observe very fast WuMV-6 migration rates (e.g. covering the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean in the last ~20 years) and higher rates of non-synonymous evolution in its surface protein. This and some other evidence point to a vertebrate playing a role in its transmission cycle!
The paper mostly focuses on Wuhan mosquito virus 6 (WuMV-6), an orthomyxovirus ((-)ssRNA) that was discovered in 2013 and has been cropping up *very* often in Culex mosquito transcriptomes since from all around the world. It's so common we can run very sophisticated phylogenetic models on it.
February 19, 2024 at 11:54 AM
The paper mostly focuses on Wuhan mosquito virus 6 (WuMV-6), an orthomyxovirus ((-)ssRNA) that was discovered in 2013 and has been cropping up *very* often in Culex mosquito transcriptomes since from all around the world. It's so common we can run very sophisticated phylogenetic models on it.
It's been such a fun & productive visit to my alma mater University of Edinburgh this last week. Ashworth remains one of the nicest & most communal science departments I've ever seen. Almost felt like I had never left.
December 5, 2023 at 4:21 PM
It's been such a fun & productive visit to my alma mater University of Edinburgh this last week. Ashworth remains one of the nicest & most communal science departments I've ever seen. Almost felt like I had never left.
Today my BSc student Miglė Kazlauskaitė (R) & colleague Miglė Tomkuvienė (L) detected Wuhan mosquito virus 6 in Lithuania for the first time (B) in mosquitoes collected by colleague Rasa Bernotienė & her students. I'm so proud, grateful & relieved.
Take that, grant reviewers who doubted it's here.
Take that, grant reviewers who doubted it's here.
November 9, 2023 at 5:05 PM
Today my BSc student Miglė Kazlauskaitė (R) & colleague Miglė Tomkuvienė (L) detected Wuhan mosquito virus 6 in Lithuania for the first time (B) in mosquitoes collected by colleague Rasa Bernotienė & her students. I'm so proud, grateful & relieved.
Take that, grant reviewers who doubted it's here.
Take that, grant reviewers who doubted it's here.
Excited to be back in Warsaw and even more excited to spend the next few days at the EMBO YIN meeting on ecology and evolutionary biology of microbes in Chęciny organised by Anna Karnkowska, Rafał Mostowy & Kasia Piwosz. I've missed meetings like this so much. Thanks, EMBO!
October 5, 2023 at 6:34 AM
Excited to be back in Warsaw and even more excited to spend the next few days at the EMBO YIN meeting on ecology and evolutionary biology of microbes in Chęciny organised by Anna Karnkowska, Rafał Mostowy & Kasia Piwosz. I've missed meetings like this so much. Thanks, EMBO!
Love seeing thousands of taxpayer galactic credits being put to good use in science publishing. I used to tell a story about a journal where copy editors changed numbers to references and vice versa. Most recently I had all the names in the acknowledgments section turned to initials.
September 29, 2023 at 6:10 AM
Love seeing thousands of taxpayer galactic credits being put to good use in science publishing. I used to tell a story about a journal where copy editors changed numbers to references and vice versa. Most recently I had all the names in the acknowledgments section turned to initials.