31st Brazilian Online Society for Virology (SBV) 2020 Annual Meeting

The year 2020 was profoundly marked by the emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2, causing COVID-19, which represents the greatest pandemic of the 21st century until now, and a major challenge for virologists in the scientific and medical communities. Increased numbers of SARS-CoV-2 infection all over the world imposed social and travel restrictions, including avoidance of face-to-face scientific meetings. Therefore, for the first time in history, the 2020 edition of the Brazilian Society of Virology (SBV) congress was totally online. Despite the challenge of the new format, the Brazilian society board and collaborators were successful in virtually congregating more than 921 attendees, which was the greatest SBV participant number ever reached. Seminal talks from prominent national and international researchers were presented every night, during a week, and included discussions about environmental, basic, animal, human, plant and invertebrate virology. A special roundtable debated exclusively new data and perspectives regarding COVID-19 by some of the greatest Brazilian virologists. Women scientists were very well represented in another special roundtable called “Young Women Inspiring Research”, which was one of the most viewed and commented section during the meeting, given the extraordinary quality of the presented work. Finally, SBV offered the Helio Gelli Pereira award for one graduate and one undergraduate student, which has also been a fruitful collaboration between the society and Viruses journal. The annual SBV meeting has, therefore, reached its goals to inspire young scientists, stimulate high-quality scientific discussion and to encourage global collaboration between virologists.


Introduction
The Brazilian Society of Virology (SBV) represents and congregates professionals and students enrolled in different areas of the virology field, aiming to promote human, animal and plant health; stimulate the development of alternative technologies; preserve the environment and promote sustainable development; increment the knowledge regarding viral wealth and diversity; encourage collaboration between national and international scientific institutions; and disseminate science to the general public.
For the past 31 years, the society promoted the Brazilian Congress of Virology and Mercosur Virology Meeting, which was usually held in a different city each year, aiming to encourage and stimulate a collaborative network among researchers from different regions of Brazil, and among Brazilians and international researchers. In 2020, The 31st SBV Meeting was compelled to happen entirely online due to the rapid and severe spread of the SARS-COV-2 infection and COVID-19 pandemic, which imposed new social-distance rules.
Despite the challenge of a new format, this meeting had the highest number of attendees, seeking to discuss high-quality science and recent advances in the overall virology fields, especially regarding COVID-19. Seminal presentations by researchers from different countries included recent knowledge and unpublished data regarding host response and immune metabolism during virus infection, environmental virology, host range evolution, embracing human-animal interface and virus emergence, metagenomics and high-throughput analysis to investigate virus evolution and surveillance, and antiviral vaccines. Remarkably, discussions regarding various aspects of COVID-19 were present all through the meeting, reflecting the engagement of SBV and all collaborators and participants in carrying out the responsibility to confront and understand major features concerning the pandemic.
Importantly, about 750 students participated in the event and could send abstracts for divulgation in the society webpage; some of those students were selected to share their work in oral sessions, having the opportunity to discuss with senior and renowned researchers in their field. Therefore, the SBV annual meeting fulfilled the major goal of a scientific society in promoting high-quality science discussion and stimulating the development and increase of well-qualified human resources committed to the advancement of science.

The Scientific Program of the 31st SBV Annual Meeting
The scientific program of the 31st SBV Annual Meeting included seven plenary conferences, three roundtables and seven short presentation sections, presented by a total of 53 speakers. Those included 15 senior scientists from Brazil (10), Spain (1) and the United States (4), besides 37 young researchers and students, who were previously selected based on their submitted abstracts. In addition, we had the help of 21 chairs who conducted those conferences, the Helio Gelli Pereira (HGP) award, and the SBV general assembly.
Conferences were based on recent development, including unpublished data, regarding basic, environmental, veterinary, human, plant and invertebrate virology. Several aspects of COVID-19 were debated in various conferences, including virus biology, disease pathogenesis, immune response and vaccines, highlighting the one-health concept and the relevance of emerging viruses' surveillance.
Undergraduates, graduate and recently graduated students could also apply for the HGP award, which is traditionally conferred by SBV to the best full article developed by a Brazilian student. Importantly, the 2020 SBV meeting had the greatest student participation in the history of the society, which reflects the continuous commitment of the SBV in promoting interactions among young and prominent researchers in the field, contributing to the development and consolidation of their scientific careers.
Among the speakers of the plenary conferences and roundtables, 11 were men and only four were women. In addition, the scientific committee comprised 12 men and nine women, emphasizing the necessity to improve female participation in SBV meetings as speakers. On the other hand, 59% (543/921) of the attendees were women, 40.9% (377/921) were men, and 0.1% (1/921) was transgender. These perspectives show that we must improve and recognize women's participation in the most relevant activities in future meetings to realistically represent everyone involved in each virology field. To minimize this big difference, we made an exclusive Young Women Inspiring Research roundtable, in which two young female scientists could discuss their careers and recent scientific developments.

Scientific Program
The global situation caused by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, including travelling and social restrictions, compelled all the scientific meetings, including the SBV annual congress, to happen entirely online. The event was held from 23-28 November 2020, with an average of two hours of activities every night, including conferences, roundtables, short and oral presentations, and the HGP award. The speakers were distributed over seven plenary conferences, three roundtables, and seven sections of short oral presentations performed by selected students and young researchers. Conferences covered different fields of virology, including the most recent advances in COVID-19 research regarding SARS-CoV-2 replication, epidemiology, and human-animal interface, in addition to host response and immunometabolism (Table 1). In 2020, SBV also conducted the election for the biennial directory board, which was held during the general assembly on the last day of the meeting.

Conference Speakers and Presentations
Dr. Robert E. Schwartz is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University and an Attending Physician at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Cornell campus of Cornell University, New York City, NY, United States. With a large experience in gastroenterology, hepatology and metabolism, over the past year Dr. Schwartz has been studying different features of COVID-19, including immunometabolism, epigenetic alterations and the evolution of antibody responses, which were covered in his exceptional opening conference presentation entitled "The landscape of host responses and disease pathology in SARS-CoV-2 infection".
Dr. Edson Elias Silva was a former president of SBV (2007-2008) and is a full researcher from Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz, at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he coordinates the Enterovirus Laboratory of the Virology Department. He also works as a consultant for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and WHO Laboratories within the Global Polio Eradication Program. Dr. Silva's talk, "Environmental surveillance of enterovirus in support of global eradication activities," pleased the audience with his long expertise in the field and stimulated discussions about the recent advances regarding polio eradicating policies.
Dr. Fernando Garcia-Arenal is a professor from the Center of Biotechnology and Plant Genomic, at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, who presented the conference talk "Ecological complexity, host range evolution, and virus emergence". Dr. Garcia-Arenal is a specialist in plant-virus interaction and co-evolution and in the investigation of host fitness functions that interfere and are modulated by virus infection, impacting the emergence of new viral diseases.
Dr. Pedro Manoel Mendes de Moraes Vieira is a professor of immunology at the department of genetics, microbiology and immunology, at the Institute of Biology, UNICAMP, SP, Brazil. He is also an affiliated member of the São Paulo State Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Vieira has been dedicating his career to investigate immunology and metabolism, with a focus in obesity and diabetes. In the past year, his group has developed important studies about the interplay between glucose metabolism, inflammatory response, and SARS-CoV-2 infection, which were encompassed in his presentation, entitled "Targeting immunometabolism to understand COVID-19 disease".
Dr. Diego Diel, who presented the fascinating conference talk "The human-animal interface of SARS-CoV-2", is an associate professor at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, NY, United States. His main research interest regards the identification and characterization of molecular mechanisms associated with host cell evasion by different animal viruses, which are relevant for disease pathogenesis.
Finally, we had two conferences from researchers associated with very important companies in the field, who presented the most recent advances of new generation sequencing  Finally, for the first time SBV promoted a unique roundtable (roundtable 3) called Young Women Inspiring Research, for which we invited young women researchers to talk about their careers, from students to independent researchers, and to give a lecture about their recent scientific accomplishments and data. Dra. Iranaia Assunção Miranda (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro-UFRJ) conducted the table. The first talk was presented by Dra. Jaqueline Goes de Jesus (Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo, SP, Brazil) and addressed the "Genomic surveillance of emerging viruses in Brazil". Dra. Carolina G. de O. Lucas (Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States) presented recent advances regarding "Kinetics of antibody responses dictate COVID-19 disease outcome".

Abstract and Oral Presentations and the Helio Gelli Pereira Award
In 2020, 369 abstracts were submitted to SBV and accepted for divulgation in the society webpage. The reviewed abstracts represented unpublished data, distributed as basic virology (62, 17%), human and public health virology (177, 48%), environmental virology (43, 12%), veterinary virology (61, 17%), and plant and invertebrate virology (26, 7%). Among those, 30 studies were selected to be presented as short oral presentations. Six oral presentation sections were hosted in the meeting, including two sections of human virology (with nine students total), one of basic virology (with five students), one of veterinary virology (with five students), one of plant and invertebrate virology (with six students), and one of environmental virology (with five students) ( Table 2).  [29] Undergraduate, graduate and recently graduated students were also encouraged to apply for the HGP award, which is conferred to complete scientific articles developed by one undergraduate (one award) and one graduate student (one award). All the submitted articles were previously selected by a committee and seven were selected for oral presentation during the congress, with two in the undergraduate and five in the graduate category ( Table 3).
The HGP award in the graduate-student category was given to Ricardo S. Cardoso, from FMRP/USP, SP, who presented the work "Host Retromer Protein Sorting Nexin 2 Interacts with Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus Structural Proteins and is Required for Efficient Viral Production" [33]. The undergraduate-category student awarded was Victória Fulgêncio Queiroz, from UFMG, who presented the work "In-depth analysis of the replication cycle and particle structure of Orpheovirus brasiliensis" [34]. The award was supported by SBV, American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and Viruses. ASM granted a one-year membership and one eBook to the awardees. Viruses offered a full discount for publication by both research groups awarded if the manuscript is accepted by referees and editors. These partnerships between SBV and Viruses have been very productive, and one of the works that received the HGP award was recently published at Viruses [35], similar to what happen in the last year.

Conclusions and Remarks
The 31st Brazilian Society for Virology Meeting represented a big but fortunate challenge to the directory board, scientific committee and society members, given the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessity to host an event completely online. Remarkably, the 2020 meeting had a record number of participants, with an extraordinary involvement of students from all over the country. Seminal lectures comprising different virology fields attracted a large audience, which established great discussion in the platforms during all the meetings. The COVID-19 roundtable presented by prominent Brazilian virologists and the Young Women Inspiring Research section were novel and very enthusiastic roundtables, which expressed the SBV aspiration to be even more representative for these members' community.
Therefore, the 31st SBV annual meeting provided an important opportunity for senior scientists, young researchers and students from Brazil and other countries to share their experience, establish new and consolidated collaborations, and further expand the current knowledge in virology. Data Availability Statement: This study did not report any data.