A highly contagious viral disease, sheeppox spreads rapidly and can affect large portions of a flock in a short time. The disease is particularly dangerous because it can cause very high mortality rates, especially in young animals, and dramatically reduces productivity by damaging wool, meat and milk yields. By extracting DNA from a range of ancient animal remains, an international team of geneticists, historians, virologists, protein chemists and conservators, has been able to uncover more than 3,500 years of history of the sheeppox virus (SPPV). The Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH), a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), took part to the study led by University College Dublin (UCD).

For its cross-regional collaboration, the DEEP-DV research consortium (“Disrupt – Evade – Exploit: Gene expression and manipulation of the host response in DNA virus infections”) has been awarded the 2026 North German Science Prize. The consortium, jointly headed by Prof. Nicole Fischer (University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE)) and Prof. Melanie Brinkmann (Technische Universität Braunschweig and Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI)), is investigating how DNA viruses evade the immune system and remain in the body permanently. Since 2012, the federal states of Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein have used this prize to recognize cooperation projects across a range of disciplines; this year’s award focuses on the life sciences. Three projects were honored, each receiving prize money of 83,333 euros.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a rod-shaped, Gram-negative bacterium capable of infecting various parts of the body, including the lungs, skin, and bloodstream. It accounts for approximately 7 per cent of hospital-acquired infections worldwide and is linked to around 559,000 deaths annually. Researchers from the group of Prof. Michael Kolbe at the Centre for Structural System Biology (CSSB), along with collaborators from Research Center Jülich, EMBL Hamburg, DESY and BIOTECH Thailand have uncovered novel virulence mechanisms of phospholipase C from P. aeruginosa. Their findings are published in Protein & Cell and shed new light on how this pathogen evades host defenses and causes severe disease. The CSSB is a common initiative by nine northern German research institutions, including the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig.