Influenza filaments: a graveyard of postdocs no longer?

Influenza virions can take a variety of shapes, from the classic spherical or kidney bean morphology found in most lab-adapted strains to much longer filamentous forms that can reach over 20 nm in length. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, Peterl et al (2025) show that filamentous morphology improves the ability of a virion to enter host cells in the presence of neutralizing antibodies, thus shedding a new light on a role for filaments in influenza virus infection.