iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Precursors - Pasteur + Joubert; some bacteria will inhibit growth of others. Prevailing idea at time of Duchesne is that bacteria will inhibit mould growth. Duchesne wondered - is the opposite possible?

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Now how to isolate nitrofier phage. Some cultivated - can they be used to mitigate nitrification in soil? Phage therapy for soil!

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Not many cultivated soil viruses as reference for seq data. In seq data only about 30% viral OTU can be assigned to host. Talk concentrates on Methanotrophs and nitrifiers in model system

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

First talk, Lucie Etienne on bat antiviral innate immunity.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Warm-up for the Société Française de Microbiologie meeting in Lyon.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Kind of following on from this, I spent some time browsing Anthony Fauci's diary entries. Although he sometimes comes across as rather dismissive to certain colleagues, a lot of the entries really do him credit, like his account of a visit to Uganda in 2001. www.faucisdiary.com/diary/2001-0...

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Exhausting few days with temp >40C in Nantes, made especially tough today since a) I am on freezer duty this week, and alarms keep going off b) had to bike to the science campus and back because of re-sit exams.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

No AC In my office, so had to move to a lab bench.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Seems like the two big Parisian science universities couldn't decide who this campus belongs to.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

End of a really good meeting. Somehow I always feel a little bit out of place at the beginning of these things, and seen to only really enjoy the last day. Off for a wander round Toulouse.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

CMI determination in undergraduate lab class. First time we tried this in the teaching lab.

96 well plate with bacterial growth in some wells.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Off the cuff problem for 1st year phylogeny class.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

And finally, kidney transplant recipients with persistent BKPyV replication had an antiviral B-cell repertoire that was just as diverse and broad as patients who controlled the virus.

Bar graph with proportions of cross-reactive B-cells per patient

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

The way round this was to keep all the data together, and visualize clusters on UMAP. Expressing antibodies chosen from different UMAP clusters and testing their specificity generally confirmed the theoretical specificity of antibodies in the clusters, but there was a catch....

UMAP with clusters defined by antigen binding

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Serious exam equipment this morning.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

which the authors call "transmutagenesis". Persistent BK virus infection leads to the accumulation of APOBEC3-induced mutations in non-infected bystander cells, some of which become malignant.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Exceptional Boxing Day walk last week up Mt Keen in Scotland. The peak was just above the clouds, with views NW to Lochnagar, and N to Cairngorm ridge.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

This happens every year. The day after the email goes out at my university, all the slots for flu vaccine shots are fully booked.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

But when are we going to get the Frank N Furter virus?

Picture of Frank N Furter from Rocky Horror Picure Show

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Nice "thank you" card from a first year undergrad who just finished a short lab placement. She said polyomaviruses were too boring to draw!

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Measles in film/literature number 2. This one is from Gone With the Wind. If you recall, when war breaks out, all the southern gents at 12 Oaks rush to enlist in the confederate army, and Scarlett, jealous that her crush, Ashley, is going to marry her bestie, Melanie, instead of her,

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I am still not too old to present a poster at the JFV in Lyon today. @sfvirologie.bsky.social

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

SR colleagues were there as well

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Standing up for science in Nantes this afternoon.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Lively students at the canteen today.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

and here it is after the Triton lysis:

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Here's the neutralization assay on the supernatants:

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

End of an era in my undergraduate virology course. This is the last year the GFP-baculovirus expt will run in the lab class.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

First Virology class of 2025, 8 am on a freezing cold Monday morning.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Just checked some Lambda phage stored at -20 since 2004. The titre hasn't budged an inch in 20 years!

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Maybe it needs to be a tree covered with mistletoe

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

In any case, now I just need to cover gd T-cells and CMV, and the mAb paper from Matthias Zehner and Florian Klein pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37967532/, then I can watch Scotland-Australia this afternoon!

Graphical abstract from the paper at Immunity

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Best labcoat in class this year (and the last few years, in fact)

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