RdRp Summit 2025 was held in Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹

RdRp Summit 2025 Short Program

Day 1 – May 11, 2025

• Welcome & Opening Remarks – Introduction to the RdRp Summit
• Introduction = The RdRp summit initiative: An overview of the last 2 years
• Session 1 = RNA Virus Categorization (Classification, Taxonomy & Naming)
• Session 2 = Best Practices, Standards, and Annotations
• Session 3 = Sequencing & Extraction methodologies for RNA virus discovery
• Session 4 = Community Project – Part 1 (Launch Session)

Day 2 – May 12, 2025

• Session 5 = Data Mining and Metadata Analysis in RNA Virus Discovery
• Session 6 = Viral Dark Matter: Detecting highly Divergent Viruses
• Community Project – Part 2 (Group discussion)
• Conclusion = The RdRp summit initiative: A projection for the next 2 years

Sponsorships

We are delighted that ISME sponsorship supports our travel grants for early career researchers. This sponsorship is intended to assist with travel expenses, particularly for projects in microbial ecology. Selected presenters will receive a 500 EUR travel grant. Please note that our program committee will review and select applications.

We are pleased to announce that our conference is supported by Peer Community In (PCI). PCI is a non-profit initiative that promotes open, transparent, and free peer review and recommendation of scientific manuscripts. We are grateful for their support of open science and our event.

Introducing Our Featured Invited Speakers

Cedric Lood
University of Oxford, UK 🇬🇧

“Perspectives on the ICTV Computational Taxonomy Challenge”

Session 1: RNA Virus Categorization (Classification, Taxonomy & Naming)

Luke Hillary
University of California, Davis, USA 🇺🇸

“Minimum Information about an Uncultivated Virus Genome (MiUViG v2) and best practices in viral genome annotation.”

Session 2: Best Practices, Standards, and Annotations

Anja Pecman
National Institute of Biology – Ljubljana, Slovenia 🇸🇮

“Nanopore sequencing for viral detection and surveillance”

Session 3: Sequencing & Extraction Methodologies for RNA Virus Discovery

• LinkedIn

Dimitris Karapliafis
Wageningen University & Research, Netherland 🇳🇱

“RdRpCATCH: A unified framework for RNA virus discovery based on RdRp profile databases”

Community Project

Rayan Chikhi
Pasteur Institute, France 🇫🇷

“Planetary-scale assembly of DNA/RNA sequencing data.”

Session 5: Data Mining and Metadata Analysis in RNA Virus Discovery

Xin Hou
Pasteur Institute, France 🇫🇷

“Using artificial intelligence to document the hidden RNA virosphere.”

Session 6: Viral Dark Matter: Detecting Highly Divergent Viruses

Rachel Seongeun Kim
Seoul National University, Korea 🇰🇷

“BFVD-Foldseek: An integrative structure-based approach to highlight viral dark matter“

Session 6: Viral Dark Matter: Detecting Highly Divergent Viruses

• Bluesky

Noriko Cassman
Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany 🇩🇪

“VirJenDB: FAIR resources for virus researchers”