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For more than half a century, scientist Bernard Moss has been commanding the attention of peers interested in prying biological secrets from poxviruses and other microbiological targets. Now he’s commanding the attention of a different audience: House Republicans.

Moss, who will mark his 86th birthday in late July and who goes by Bernie, has worked for more than 55 years in the laboratories of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. Over that time, he has been investigating viruses in relative anonymity — except, that is, among the virological cognoscenti.

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But last year, in an interview with Science, Moss said he planned to try to determine why one strain of mpox viruses, known as Clade 1, is so much more virulent than those in a second strain, Clade 2, by taking genes from the former and putting them into the latter. Clade 2 viruses are responsible for the ongoing mpox outbreak first detected in May 2022.

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