Gabriel Victora
@victora.bsky.social
B cell biologist at @rockefeller.edu and @hhmi.org. Opinions are my own. www.germinal.center
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Fitness Race: Modelling antibody evolution by replaying a monoclonal germinal centre reaction over a 100 times 📷 William DeWitt, Ashni Vora, Tatsuya Araki et al @victora.bsky.social @rockefeller.edu @matsen.bsky.social in @cp-cell.bsky.social ➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2026... + John Ankers
2/ Meet Awardee Noah Palm. He’s setting out to uncover how the gut microbiome & immune system have co-evolved--he thinks that antibodies aren’t just for defense but are actively shaping the evolution of our commensal gut microbes 🦠. 🥳 Congrats Dr. Palm! @yale.edu 🙏 #HFScout @victora.bsky.social
The @victora.bsky.social lab at Rockefeller has turned germinal centers into a living laboratory for one of biology's oldest questions: how much of #evolution is shaped by chance? Learn more in this Q&A with Victora and graduate fellow Ashni Vora: https://bit.ly/4fB23bm
This was one of the most complex projects I have ever been involved in. Took us the better part of a decade, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Especially the intensive and extensive interactions with @wsdewitt.github.io, @matsen.bsky.social, and @tylernstarr.bsky.social
William DeWitt@wsdewitt.github.io · 2mo agoThis started in 2019 as daydreamy PhD student musings with Tatsuya Araki. We're as excited as ever about germinal centers as a platform for experimental evolution. Many thanks to PIs @victora.bsky.social @matsen.bsky.social, co-1st authors Ashni Vora and Tatsuya, and many other key collaborators!
This is what I call #combination of #artistry #science #romanticism on #Germinal #centers (I know I am a #Tcell fanatic!)-cool paper by @victora.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Replaying germinal center evolution on a quantified affinity landscape
Darwinian evolution of immunoglobulin genes within germinal centers (GCs) underlies the progressive increase in antibody affinity following antigen ex…
sciencedirect.com
Read our latest preprint. A window into GC clonal evolution upon boost.
Gabriel Victora@victora.bsky.social · 2mo agoHappy to share our latest preprint on the clonal dynamics of GC “refueling.” We asked what happens at the clonal level after the simple (and ubiquitous) step of delivering a second vaccine dose during an ongoing GC response. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Happy to share our latest preprint on the clonal dynamics of GC “refueling.” We asked what happens at the clonal level after the simple (and ubiquitous) step of delivering a second vaccine dose during an ongoing GC response. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Very sad news: we just lost Carl Schachter, one of the greatest contemporary theoreticians of music. I had the enormous privilege of having Carl as a theory teacher and chamber music coach for many years at Mannes. theviolinchannel.com/american-mus...
American Music Theorist Carl Schachter has Died, Aged 93
World's Leading Classical Music Platform
theviolinchannel.com
You're entitled to your own opinion. You're NOT entitled to your own facts. #BelieveTheScience What he said 💯 👇 👇 👇
Someday, When the madness is done, And there is a true accounting, Of the lives that were saved, And those that were lost, I know we will find the name of Ralph Baric On the right side of the ledger. I, for one, am grateful.
Korie Dean@koriedean.bsky.social · 3mo agoBreaking @theassemblync.bsky.social: UNC-Chapel Hill coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric is retiring in June www.theassemblync.com/news/educati...
📢🎉@hhmi-science.bsky.social HHMI competition for the next cohorts of #HannaGray Fellows and #FreemanHrabowski Scholars opening 11/3/2026. Senior postdocs and faculty within 7 years of appointment. Up to $10M over 10 yrs, + salary & benefits. Spread the word and consider applying! bit.ly/4vhC0LA
Separating selection from mutation in antibody language models buff.ly/qPXRv13?utm_...
Separating selection from mutation in antibody language models
Factoring out nucleotide-level mutation biases from antibody language models dramatically improves prediction of functional mutation effects while reducing computational cost by orders of magnitude.
buff.ly
Except in GCs theonion.com/biologists-c...
Biologists Confirm Not Much Evolution Happened Today
STANFORD, CA—Calling it a “pretty slow one” as far as natural selection and genetic drift were concerned, biologists from Stanford University confirmed Tuesday that not much evolution happened today. ...
theonion.com
⏰ 🏃➡️A quick reminder that the abstract submission & early bird registration deadline for AIRR Community Meeting VIII: Decoding and Recoding Immunity is April 15. 🔗 tinyurl.com/airrcmeeting8 #airrc8 #immunosky
Spoiler alert: you have to treat the organism. & people who think in silico approaches are ready to replace animal models should not be included in adult conversations (ppl who want to develop them, very welcome, it's those who think they are ready for prime time that need to fuck all the way off)
In my simple brain, it's exciting but you need to understand the limitations: cell free systems allow you to ask q's about molecules; in vitro systems allow you to ask q's about molecules & cells; organoids may one day allow you to ask q's about mols, cells, and tissues/organs - but never organisms
Or have a listen to my convo with Tasuku Honjo & Pierre Golstein, whose labs discovered PD1 and CTLA4 respectively, and imagine a scenario where this is worked out with the current non-animal methods www.embo.org/podcasts/fro...
From cell death to cancer immunotherapy – Podcast – EMBO
An interview with Tasuku Honjo
embo.org
We are not really there yet, not even close. The most valuable (in market terms) drugs out there today come fm understanding the incretin effect, the unexpected finding that oral & iv glucose provoke different insulin response. Can you see a road to that from any of the current animal alternatives?
One more trick pulled off by antibody-mediated feedback www.cell.com/immunity/ful...
Antibody-mediated feedback modulates interclonal competition in the germinal center
Antibodies generated by prior immune responses regulate B cell responses upon recall immunization. Barbulescu et al. examine whether antibodies produced by an ongoing immune response influence the out...
cell.com
Happy to present Gloss, our new computational method for the analysis of multi-modal LIPSTIC + scRNA-seq data coupling cell-cell interaction measurements with intracellular transcriptomes. Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.cr... Led by an amazing PhD student Tamjeed Azad, with @victora.bsky.social
Redirecting
doi.org
'Here, we discover functional adaptation of resident lymphocytes within two distinct skin stem cell niches and show that through this communication, each niche adjusts to meet diverse tissue demands.' #Preprint #Immunology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
A study from @danmucida.bsky.social and @victora.bsky.social showed how immune cells in the gut distinguish between food and harmful pathogens, shedding light on the origins of #foodallergies. #RockefellerScience #YearInReview 🔗: https://bit.ly/4hyS18b
In @natureportfolio.nature.com: Researchers, including Rockefeller's own Gabriel Victora (@victora.bsky.social), are striving to understand the impact a phenomenon known as original antigenic sin has on immunity to the virus that causes the flu.
Immunological sin: how a person's earliest flu infections dictate life-long immunity
Researchers are striving to understand the impact a phenomenon known as original antigenic sin has on immunity to the virus.
nature.com
Congrats on a very important paper!
Michela Locci@michelalocci.bsky.social · 8mo agoI am excited to share that our work, in which we have dissected the signals driven by the nucleoside-modified mRNA and LNP components of mRNA vaccines that regulate germinal center (GC) responses, is now published in Cell! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Secret to great science: find the absolute best collaborators 👇👇
Frederick "Erick" Matsen@matsen.bsky.social · 8mo agoOver the past 5+ years I've had the honor of working with @wsdewitt.github.io @victora.bsky.social and many others on a project to "replay" affinity maturation evolution from a fixed starting point. matsen.group/general/2025...
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