It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The movement patterns of waterfowl, including ducks, swans and geese, may affect the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza in bird populations, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.
Researchers found that birds travel much shorter distances in areas with human activity, likely because those landscapes have plenty of food, water and shelter.
When birds stay in one place, disease doesn’t spread as much. But it could also mean more intense hotspots of disease outbreaks in concentrated areas.
By understanding the movement patterns of waterfowl outside of typical migration periods, scientists could better predict where bird flu, or H5N1, might spread next.
“Birds are like us. They’re always responding to what’s around them, whether that’s food availability or disturbance from people or other animals,” said Claire Teitelbaum, assistant unit leader with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Georgia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, lead author of the study and an adjunct assistant professor in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. “We can take the environment, predict how much we think birds are moving and then use that to predict where avian flu is going to go.”
Waterfowl stay put in areas with diverse habitats, human influence
The researchers analyzed 20 years of data containing movement information from more than 4,600 total waterfowl spanning 26 species in the Northern Hemisphere. The scientists tracked how far the waterfowl moved over time during breeding and winter seasons, when birds “commute” regularly between areas used for resting and eating.
The distance of these so-called commutes, which took place outside of their regular seasonal migrations, appeared to depend on the birds’ environment. Birds in uniform areas, such as vast expanses of grasslands or farmlands, traveled six times farther to acquire food or a safe location to rest compared to birds in more diverse landscapes.
The waterfowl in those more varied landscapes, which ranged from wetlands to urban green spaces, often didn’t need to travel more than a mile around their “home” to meet all or most of their daily needs.
“If we provide enough diverse attractive habitats, these animals may want to stick around,” Teitelbaum said. “Like humans, if you live in a suburban neighborhood where it’s just single-family homes for miles and miles, you’re going to have to drive miles and miles out of that area to get to work or shop. If you live in an urban center, you have everything you need right there.”
Locations with a significant human population also played a role, as they were more likely to have protected green spaces with water sources or cover. Human activity could also mean literal blocks that prevent bird movement, such as roads or fences.
Birds in these regions traveled about one-third of the distance of birds residing in sparser areas.
Different seasons could play role in bird flu spread outside of seasonal migrations
While yearly migrations are a major factor in the spread of H5N1, the present study aimed to understand how flight during breeding and winter seasons may add to transmission.
The researchers found that during winter months, movements were over twice as far when compared to travel during the breeding season. Waterfowl often had to fly farther in their daily routines to secure food or places to sleep, potentially carrying the virus with them.
In addition to studying these daily movements, the researchers found the same patterns when studying birds’ weekly movement distances. That’s key, Teitelbaum explained, as one week is also the incubation period for the virus.
Breeding season could present its own challenges. During this time, birds were less likely to travel far distances, instead remaining close to their nests. Although that can limit wider spread, it also could increase the risk for localized hotspots of the virus.
“If we want to keep the flu from spreading, we might want to see what we can do to keep the birds in one place, but there’s that flipside. Outbreaks happen when birds are in high density, so we might have increased transmission locally,” she said. “That’s the underpinning: How can we link the distances that birds are moving to the distances that flu is moving?”
Waterfowl Move Less in Heterogeneous and Human-Populated Landscapes, With Implications for Spread of Avian Influenza Viruses
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Researchers move closer to preventing pandemics
Researchers have developed an AI tool that can help determine whether unfamiliar bacteria carry genetic features linked to disease. By enabling the detection of harmful bacteria before they infect humans, this could transform pandemic preparedness
Researchers have developed an AI tool that can help determine whether unfamiliar bacteria carry genetic features linked to disease. By enabling the detection of harmful bacteria before they infect humans, this could transform pandemic preparedness. Researchers have developed an AI tool that can help determine whether unfamiliar bacteria carry genetic features linked to disease. By enabling the detection of harmful bacteria before they infect humans, this could transform pandemic preparedness.
PathogenFinder2 is a new AI tool developed by researchers at DTU in Denmark, in collaboration with international partners, to determine whether an unfamiliar bacterium possesses genetic characteristics associated with the ability to cause disease. The research has been published in Bioinformatics, one of the world’s leading journals in bioinformatics and computational biology. The research could significantly strengthen pandemic preparedness.
“The purpose of PathogenFinder2 is not only to characterise bacteria already known to be associated with disease, but also to assess the potential threat posed by new bacteria, even before the first infection has emerged. This could give authorities better opportunities to prevent outbreaks rather than simply reacting to them,” says Professor Frank Møller Aarestrup, Head of the Research Group for Genomic Epidemiology at the DTU National Food Institute.
“PathogenFinder2 can be used to investigate sewage, healthy humans and animals, and identify bacteria with pathogenic potential before they have caused their first infection, providing a basis for developing tests, vaccines, and treatments much earlier,” says researcher Alfred Ferrer Florensa, who carried out his PhD project on PathogenFinder2 at the DTU National Food Institute.
Why identifying risky bacteria is difficult
Most bacteria around us are harmless, and many support human health by aiding digestion, protecting the skin, or contributing to food production. Yet a small fraction can cause serious infections.
Climate change, expanding ecosystems, and growing exploration of microbial diversity mean that researchers are encountering more bacterial species than ever before, including many with no prior documentation. Assessing which of these may pose a risk is therefore a growing challenge.
Determining whether a bacterium can cause disease traditionally requires laboratory experiments that are slow, expensive, and often inconsistent. Computational approaches have helped speed up this process, but most rely on comparing a new organism to known pathogens, a method that breaks down when no close relatives exist.
“It was essential not only to make accurate predictions about bacterial threats resembling those we already know, but also to be prepared for the emergence of a completely new and previously unknown disease-causing bacterium,” says Alfred Ferrer Florensa.
What PathogenFinder2 does differently
PathogenFinder2 introduces a fundamentally new strategy. Instead of relying on similarity to known species, the model uses protein language models, advanced AI systems trained on millions of protein sequences. Much as text prediction tools learn patterns in human language, these models learn the language of proteins, allowing them to detect biochemical signals that traditional approaches miss.
“PathogenFinder2 is one of the first models to interpret whole bacterial genomes by leveraging the massive potential of language models. It performs significantly better than all previous models, particularly when it encounters bacterial species we have never seen before. In addition, it provides explanations for its predictions,” says PhD Alfred Ferrer Florensa.
The researchers emphasise that the model can identify interesting patterns and potential risks, but the results must be further examined before any final conclusions can be drawn.
Understanding why a bacterium looks risky
PathogenFinder2 does more than produce a prediction. It highlights the specific proteins that most strongly influence its assessment.
These may include known virulence factors, such as toxins or attachment structures (features that help bacteria attach to human cells), as well as completely uncharacterised proteins that could play a role in disease.
This interpretability provides new avenues for research into diagnostics, vaccine targets, and mechanisms of infection, including proteins not previously linked to disease.
A map of bacterial disease potential
Using protein language models to represent full genomes also enabled the researchers to build the first Bacterial Pathogenic Capacity Landscape, a map showing how thousands of bacteria relate to one another based on their disease-linked features.
The landscape reveals clusters of bacteria that infect similar tissues or share metabolic strategies, offering a new way to explore microbial evolution and interactions.
“The Bacterial Pathogenic Capacity Landscape provides the first overview of all the disease‑causing bacteria that humans can be infected by. It reveals patterns and can, for example, show which bacteria tend to infect the same body sites or potentially rely on similar nutrients. This gives us new opportunities to investigate how bacteria evolve and interact,” says Alfred Ferrer Florensa.
Trained on 21,000 bacterial genomes
The researchers assembled the largest dataset to date of bacterial genomes with known disease-causing potential or known non-pathogenic behavior.
The dataset consisted of more than 21,000 bacterial genomes from international databases, including bacteria isolated from human infections, the healthy human microbiome, probiotic cultures, food production, and extreme environments, such as organisms capable of surviving in very hot or very cold conditions.
This gave the model a unique foundation for distinguishing between harmful and harmless bacteria, even when encountering previously undescribed species.
The project is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme (grant 874735), the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under NIH (award U24AI183840), and the Novo Nordisk Foundation (grant NNF26SA0109818). It is also supported by the HPC RIVR Consortium and EuroHPC JU through access to computing resources.
Whole-genome prediction of bacterial pathogenic capacity on novel bacteria using protein language models with PathogenFinder2
Article Publication Date
20-Mar-2026
COI Statement
Jose Juan Almagro Armenteros is an employee of Bristol Myers Squibb Company at the time of the publication; however, that did not influence the research.
New flu drug discovery could help fight future pandemics
Scientists say that new laboratory tests have revealed a new way to stop flu viruses, which could lead to better treatments and improved pandemic preparedness.
The international team, including researchers from the University of York, Leiden University, The Francis Crick Institute and the University of Barcelona, has developed experimental compounds that appear to block the virus more effectively than current medicines.
Flu viruses spread in the body using a tool on their surface called an enzyme. Today’s main treatments, such as Oseltamivir, slow the virus down by temporarily blocking this enzyme. But these drugs don’t stop it completely, and the virus can sometimes work around them.
Professor Gideon Davies, from the University of York’s Department of Chemistry, said: “In the lab we have developed compounds, called ‘sugar aziridines’, which take a stronger approach.
“Instead of just blocking the enzyme for a short time, they lock onto it permanently, stopping it from working altogether. This prevents the virus from spreading from one cell to another, and could make the treatment more powerful and longer-lasting.”
In laboratory tests, the new compounds were able to stop common types of flu virus, including H3N2 - a major seasonal strain - and even bird flu strains, like H5N1.
Professor Carme Rovira, from the University of Barcelona, said: “Our combined study let us watch these molecules “shut down” neuraminidase at the atomic level—first by fitting the enzyme’s transition state, then by enabling a covalent lock.”
While this is still early research, the results suggest the approach could work against a range of flu viruses, and may also help improve vaccines.
Professor Davies said: “Because the compounds attach so precisely to the virus, they can be used as tools to study and measure how well flu vaccines are working, potentially helping scientists design better ones.”
More testing is needed to check they are safe and effective in people, but researchers say the discovery opens up a new way of tackling flu, which could be important in preparing for future outbreaks or pandemics.
Professor Hermen Overkleeft, from Leiden University, said: “We are keen to develop the technology towards clinical application further. This will not be easy, as drug development is a lengthy and costly route where failure is more likely than success. Yet, the unique mode of action of our sugar aziridines, which we are in the process of patent-protecting, gives us a real edge over competing solutions.”
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A $2M USDA grant will fund research on the infectivity of bird flu in the air.
Nonthermal plasma has been shown to deactivate airborne virus particles.
University of Michigan Engineering is collaborating with researchers at the University of Bristol in the U.K.
Discovering how the bird flu virus degrades in the air around livestock and how engineering solutions can effect that degradation quickly and efficiently are core aims of a new University of Michigan Engineering-led project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This work could help prevent or mitigate future outbreaks.
Detection of bird flu infection within flocks and herds leads to the mass culling of animals, which disrupts food supply chains. The ongoing outbreak of HPAI H5N1 that began in 2022 in the U.S. has led to the loss of 175 million birds and, as of late 2024, has cost the industry roughly $1.4 billion.
How quickly does the virus that causes bird flu lose its infectivity in the air, specifically air found in enclosed livestock environments?
What technologies can effectively reduce bird flu's infectivity in those environments?
Herek Clack, U-M associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, will lead the project, conducting tests on how nonthermal plasmas can render aerosols containing the virus that causes bird flu incapable of infecting humans and livestock. His team's approach essentially exposes air to strong electric fields, temporarily creating free electrical charges that damage viruses and render them harmless.
"Both the USDA and the agricultural industry want a playbook—science-based guidelines—for how to operate under the threat of bird flu," Clack said. "We're after a better understanding of how the airborne virus behaves in enclosed livestock operations and what technologies can best protect animals and workers."
How nonthermal plasma inactivates viruses
Previously, Clack and his team developed a plasma reactor capable of reducing the number of infectious viruses in the air by 99.9%. Building on that work, they will test how nonthermal plasma inactivates viruses in air that contains traces of pollutants, such as ammonia, that are common around livestock.
Clack and his team have previously shown that such air pollutants can, at very low concentrations, inhibit the effectiveness of nonthermal plasmas for inactivating viral aerosols. Under this new grant, they will expand the range of air pollutants tested and explore enhancements to the nonthermal plasma that could counteract those pollutants' effects. Of particular interest is how air pollutants and plasma treatment separately influence the air's pH, a chemical measure related to acidity.
"A key question we're looking at is, 'What will happen with pH levels—how do they impact the infectivity of the viruses?'" Clack said. "The air pollutants tend to raise the pH in the air, but nonthermal plasma reduces pH."
If part of the plasma's effectiveness depends on lowering the pH of the air, it may not be as effective if the air's pH starts higher.
Measuring normal bird flu virus infectivity loss in air
Allen Haddrell, a research fellow at the University of Bristol in the U.K., will employ a relatively new technology of his own design to answer the question of how long the virus that causes bird flu retains its infectivity in the air. The traditional method for measuring how quickly airborne viruses decay involves filling a cylindrical drum with virus-laden air, then slowly rotating the drum to keep the virus particles in the air. But setup for this method is slow.
"What they miss with that approach is roughly the first 20 minutes of the infectivity decay," Haddrell said. "Consequently, they can get wildly different results. Different research groups can look at the same virus and come to different conclusions."
"We levitate virus-containing droplets into an electrodynamic field," he said. "We expose the population of viruses containing aerosols to different environmental conditions, where we change things like relative humidity or gas composition.
"After a set period, we deposit the aerosol and measure how much the viral infectivity has changed. We use this approach to measure how different environments affect airborne viral decay. And we use this information to figure out the fundamental drivers of decay."
A better grasp of the decay dynamics associated with the virus that causes bird flu and a proven means of inactivating the virus in ventilation air would give the agricultural industry tools to better deal with the virus's next appearance. But it will also lay the groundwork for an industry response to the next human pandemic.
"During COVID, workers in these enclosed livestock or processing operations were 50 to 70 times more at risk for contracting the virus, according to a GAO report from 2023," Clack said. "It told us those close working conditions were the source of greater risk."
Understanding the decay rate of airborne viruses like those that cause bird flu will help us devise more effective protection for workers and animals from future infectious respiratory diseases.
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Bird flu risk to Danish cattle – new tool can warn farmers before infection spreads
Bird flu can infect both cows and humans. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a tool that can predict where and when the risk of infection is highest.
Sudden drop in milk production, thickened milk, and cows under movment restrictions. Since 2024, American farmers have had bitter experiences with the feared bird flu (H5N1), which in several cases has been introduced to cattle – and then spread rapidly among cattle herds. In some instances, humans have been infected as well. The contagious virus is increasingly being transmitted from wild birds to mammals –such as cattle.
The outbreaks in the U.S. raise the question of whether Denmark is sufficiently prepared should the infection spread to Danish cattle.
But now there is good news for both authorities and concerned dairy producers. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a tool that can predict where and when the risk of infection is highest. The tool is based on infection data from the U.S. outbreaks and adapted to Danish context.
“We have combined detailed data on wild bird abundance with cattle density in the U.S. to calculate how easily the infection can be transmitted from wild birds to cattle,” says You Chang, a postdoc at the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.
So far, bird flu has not been detected in Danish cattle. But the experiences from the U.S., where more than 1,000 herds across 19 states have been infected, show that there is good reason to be prepared. The recent detection of H5N1 antibodies in several Dutch dairy cows and earlier cases in British sheep, suggests that bird flu may already be spilling over to non-poultry livestock in Europe. The researchers behind the study believe it is likely only a matter of time before Danish cattle test positive for bird flu – and knowledge and preparedness are therefore needed.
“This is the first European study that uses outbreak data from the U.S. to assess the risk of transmission of bird flu from wild birds to cattle, and applies that data to a European context,” says Beate Conrady, professor at the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences.
Denmark Is Especially Vulnerable
Several of the outbreaks on American cattle farms are directly linked to wild birds. And because Denmark is located along key migratory bird routes, our small country is particularly exposed. With the new tool, researchers have combined wild bird abundance, movement, outbreak in the other EU countries with information on cattle density. This knowledge makes it possible to pinpoint where – and when during the year – the risk of infection is highest.
“This gives Danish cattle farmers the opportunity to be alert if they know they are in a high-risk area and it’s a time of year when the risk is elevated. Then they can keep a closer eye on whether their animals show symptoms. At the same time, the knowledge can help authorities consider targeted surveillance, such as testing milk for early detection” says You Chang.
Data from the study shows that in Denmark the risk of infection is highest from December to March, and farmers located along the country´s western coasts and on Lolland should be especially vigilant.
Preparedness Should Be Standard
The first confirmed case of infection in cattle was registered in 2024 in the U.S. state of Texas. And the virus doesn’t just spread among animals. In the U.S., 71 people have been infected with the disease, which has primarily manifested as eye infections. It is mainly employees in the poultry and dairy sectors who have been infected.
Although the infection has not yet been detected in Denmark, there is good reason to be prepared. The researchers emphasize that the study focuses on the risk of the virus being introduced from wild birds into cattle herds. Whether the virus would spread further between farms in Denmark remains uncertain and is still under investigation.
“Being ready for a potential launch in Denmark is essential. Preparedness should not be a luxury – it should be standard,” says Beate Conrady.
