Laboratory and Field Methods in Virology and Virus Ecology

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Ruben Michael Ceballos

University of California, Merced

Dr. Ceballos is the Project Director of the NSF-funded Host-Virus Evolutionary Dynamics Institute (HVEDI), a multi-institutional collaborative studying virus-host interactions in virus systems that span domains of life (i.e., Archaea, Bacteria, Eukarya). The Ceballos Lab is a general microbiology and biochemistry research laboratory in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department at the University of California Merced. His research focuses on virology, virus ecology, and developing biotechnology from extremophile microorganisms. He has studied hyperthermophilic archaea and their viruses for over a decade. He is also the named inventor on a patent for using engineered thermophilic platforms for protecting enzymes in industrial and agricultural applications. More recently, the Ceballos Lab has focused on understanding mechanisms by which double-stranded DNA virus infections (i.e., roseoloviruses) can lead to neurological dysfunction. Dr. Ceballos received his bachelor’s degree in Physics and Math from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, his master’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and his doctorate in Integrative Microbiology and Biochemistry from the University of Montana. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Indigenous Graduate Program awardee and a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow. He is also a graduate of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s SEA-PHAGES faculty training program.

Collection Overview

Viruses are integral components of every ecosystem, shaping host populations, biodiversity, and global health. Advances in laboratory and field methodologies have transformed the ability to detect, isolate, characterize, monitor, and experimentally investigate viruses across human, animal, plant, and environmental systems. As emerging and re-emerging viral threats continue to expand across ecological interfaces, there is an increasing need for standardized, reproducible, and innovative methodological approaches that support research from controlled laboratory investigations to real-world environmental surveillance.

Despite rapid technological progress, important challenges remain, including the lack of harmonized sampling and preservation protocols, limited recovery of infectious viruses from complex matrices, difficulties in culturing diverse viruses, inconsistent molecular and serological workflows, variable sequencing and bioinformatics pipelines, and challenges associated with long-term ecological surveillance, host identification, and integration of laboratory and field datasets across ecosystems.

This Collection aims to showcase diverse laboratory and field methodologies that advance research in virology and virus ecology. It welcomes methodological contributions spanning virus detection, isolation, characterization, cultivation, surveillance, experimental investigation, and ecological monitoring across human, animal, plant, vector, and environmental systems. The collection also encourages protocols integrating molecular, cellular, immunological, imaging, genomic, bioinformatic, and ecological approaches, as well as field-deployable technologies, high-throughput analytical platforms, data integration frameworks, quality assurance practices, and biosafety procedures.

By bringing together robust, reproducible, and scalable methodologies, this collection will provide researchers with practical experimental and field workflows, promote methodological standardization, strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration, improve comparability across studies, and accelerate discoveries in virology, virus ecology, emerging infectious diseases, and One Health research.