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Dorian McILROY

@dmcilroy.bsky.social
1.4K followers 89 following 576 posts

Virology professor at Nantes University. Interested in polyomaviruses, particularly capsid interactions with antibodies and host receptors. Opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views or policies of my employer.

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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 1h
Evolutionary, not "evil"
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 1h
Loss of c-term domain in 2 species seems to increase restriction of rhabdovirus infection. Evil footprint of past epidemic?
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 1h
Myotis have duplication of PKR gene -> functional diversification. Now onto GBP5. In Golgi, can block furin cleavage.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 1h
Focus on Myotis bats, sampling in wild -> genome seq and fibroblast cell lines from punch biopsy.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 1h
"A quarter of mammalian species is actually a bat'
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 1h
First talk, Lucie Etienne on bat antiviral innate immunity.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 4h
Warm-up for the Société Française de Microbiologie meeting in Lyon.
My run route in Lyon.
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Alex Crits-Christoph @acritschristoph.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
How the discovery of microbial opsins led to the development of optogenetics www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Here is a nice article on the origin of optogenetics in microbial rhodopsins, and first of all were the haloarchaea:
cell.com
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Paul Offit @pauloffit.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
pauloffit.substack.com/p/irreligiou... Are religious exemptions to vaccination religious?
pauloffit.substack.com
Irreligious Acts
Are religious exemptions to vaccination religious?
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Great minds think alike!
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
www.lemonde.fr/planete/arti... Spent a hectic day driving people from Paris to this demo and back. On the march, we got interviewed by Le Monde. There was no virology.
lemonde.fr
« Les victimes ne veulent plus mourir en silence » : des malades du cancer et des agriculteurs tentent de mobiliser l’opinion pour la sortie des pesticides
Plusieurs milliers de personnes ont manifesté, samedi 3 octobre dans l’Eure, près d’une usine de Syngenta, leader mondial du secteur, pour demander la sortie des pesticides et tenter d’installer cet e...
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Well, the way I see it, is that all the finicky stuff just to get a figure panel looking right can certainly be handled by AI, rather than getting my head round ggplot2 syntax.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
My main use is asking for help doing simple coding stuff in R. As a result, I am not learning how to do it myself.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I damn well don't.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It seems that I am getting progressively less and less efficient at writing. After a whole morning and half the afternoon, I have just added two short paragraphs to the intriduction of a paper. And no, I am not going to ask fucking Claude (or one of his mates) to write it for me!
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
With respect to hiring decisions, would it help if committees just evaluated candidates' top 3 papers?
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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I'm surprised a community of publishing writers can blame AI for the problems of peer review when those same writers cite our study, "the strain on scientific publishing", which characterizes how this problem existed before AI. bit.ly/StrainQSS It's the incentives structure, not the AI. 1/n
scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org
Ask the Chefs: Peer Review Capacity — Uncomfortable Truths and Overlooked Conversations - The Scholarly Kitchen
For Peer Review Week 2026, we asked the Chefs two questions: What is one uncomfortable truth about peer review that the scholarly publishing community doesn’t talk about enough? And, beyond recruiting...
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Philippe Le Mercier, ViralZone @viralzone.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A clever new tool for building full icosahedral capsids from AlphaFold models — from the talented team behind ViperDB. FoldaVirus, a knowledge-based icosahedral capsid prediction tool using AlphaFold www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Well deserved!
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Microbiology Society @microbiologysociety.org · 17/09/2026
It’s International Microorganism Day! For a third year running, some of our Champions have told us about their favourite microbes and our very talented Champion, Eliza Wolfson, has brought these to life with her illustrations! @eliza-coli.bsky.social @femsmicro.org
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This is happening all over Europe. As I understand, in some cases they have to pick up their visa in person in Jerusalem or Cairo, but of course, they can't leave Gaza.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I will also be on strike today, although with a 5% budget deficit, there is zero chance that research and higher ed spending is going to increase in France.
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BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Bangladesh is experiencing the largest measles outbreak in the world currently. Over 166,000 cases and almost 1000 children dead. Caused by issues with vaccine supply and missed vaccine doses. www.reuters.com/business/hea...
reuters.com
Bangladesh fights world's worst measles outbreak as vaccination gaps fuel spread
Bangladesh, which once came close to eliminating measles, is facing its worst outbreak on record, with 999 suspected and confirmed measles-related deaths reported since March as hospitals struggle wit...
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Roland Pierik @roleo.eurosky.social · 08/09/2026
The number of cases of cervical cancer reported in Scotland among women given the HPV vaccine at 12-13 years of age is now zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
No cervical cancer cases in fully HPV-vaccinated women in Scotland
A study published by Public Health Scotland finds that the HPV vaccine is "highly effective".
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
CST-IV (more diverse microbiome, not dominated by lactobacilli, leading to higher pH) was associated with HPV acquisition. HPV clearance was not associated with microbiome composition. Questions from the floor about mechanism - is it just pH? Maybe inflammation? Data presented by Inayat Bhardwaj.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
At the French Papilloma-Polyomavirus meeting, which is in Chinon this year. Three very interesting talks in the first session from Samuel Alizon and his group, with a couple of them looking into the interactions between vaginal microbiome and HPV infection in the longitudinal PAPCLEAR cohort.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
That's one greedy microbe!
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
What I did on Sunday: spend hours tracking down and re-analyzing data from 2024 to re-draw a figure. Things I did NOT do: gardening; prepare the talk for incoming international students that I gave today (it was very uninspiring); call my mum for a chat; get a birthday present for my daughter.
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Akio Adachi @1464-205.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
thelancet.com
Accelerating the clinical development of treatments for dengue: WHO dengue therapeutics landscape analysis and target product profiles
Dengue, an Aedes mosquito-borne viral infection, is on the rise with climate and demographic change. In 2023, WHO declared dengue its highest grade of emergency, following the largest number of cases ...
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Flo Débarre @flodebarre.eurosky.social · 02/09/2026
Currently watching (will try to post notes) 🧵
screenshot of Zoom broadcast of L Gostin and A Fauci discussion
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Nature Microbiology @natmicrobiol.nature.com · 03/09/2026
Out Now! BCL-2 inhibition at antiretroviral therapy initiation reduces the intact SIV reservoir in macaques #MicroSky
go.nature.com
BCL-2 inhibition at antiretroviral therapy initiation reduces the intact SIV reservoir in macaques
Nature Microbiology, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02464-7Inhibition of the pro-survival protein BCL-2 at the initiation of antiretroviral therapy in macaques reduced persistent viral reservoirs in both blood and lymph nodes during SIV infection.
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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 02/09/2026
Your 'doom quote' for today: "one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders ... is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power." www.thriftbooks.com/w/collapse-h...
thriftbooks.com
Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or... book by Jared Diamond
Buy a cheap copy of Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or... book by Jared Diamond. In Jared Diamond's follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate...
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Ryan Hisner @ryanhisner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I've spent that past 2 weeks beating my head against the wall trying to wrangle the most incorrigibly unruly mutation type of all—insertions. I'm sure I'll find some more fine-tuning to do, but I'm finally satisfied with the results and will share a quick summary of them in this 🧵. 1/13
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Trehalose is like magic!
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The answer to question 1 is that upload only works when I am on the university Wifi connection, not the ethernet port.
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I know this isn't terrorism. You know this isn't terrorism. The authorities know this isn't terrorism. But, once again, they have labelled protesters "terrorists", as part of the long-running programme to ensure that no one dares protest about anything any more. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Seven charged with damaging Trump’s Scottish golf course accused of ‘terrorist connection’
Course at Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort was painted with words ‘Gaza is not 4 sale’ and clubhouse was sprayed with graffiti
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Why is the EGA server not accepting my connection requests with FileZilla? Why is metadata so complicated? But more importantly, why is it me doing this, and not someton else?
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Crawford Kilian @handle.invalid · 27/08/2026
Letter to the editor: Autochthonous transmission patterns of dengue virus serotype 2 in Italy: evidence from outbreaks in 2024 - www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2...
eurosurveillance.org
Letter to the editor: Autochthonous transmission patterns of dengue virus serotype 2 in Italy: evidence from outbreaks in 2024
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Wow, the article is fascinating. Not sure it entirely means a split origin of life though, unless the idea is that LUCA was not fully alive, since it did not have a complete metabolism.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Two manuscripts finished (one major revision, one new submission), and the team project document finished, so now it's time to start preparing for the new academic year.
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Letter from 130 bioethicists condemns the “unwarranted, ill-advised, & frankly bizarre vendetta against a scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, rather than making a sincere effort to learn from the painful experiences of the pandemic to improve national preparedness” bioethicstoday.org/blog/an-open...
bioethicstoday.org
Blog - An Open Letter of Support for Anthony Fauci from the Bioethics Community - Bioethics Today
As individuals concerned with ethics in science, medicine, and public health, we wish to express our dismay at the approach taken by Senate leaders to
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
My best guess for broadsword in french would be "glaive", and that doesn't sound like dérailleur at all.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Looks like it's time for us to abandon the Bunsen burners in lab class.
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Currently struggling with my first submission to the EGA ega-archive.org/about/ega/
ega-archive.org
About - EGA European Genome-phenome Archive
The European Genome-phenome Archive is a global network for permanent archiving and sharing of genetic, phenotypic, and clinical data generated for the purposes of biomedical research projects or in t...
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Richard Lenski @relenski.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
If Zachary Blount had one dollar for every cell he plated in his dissertation looking for new Cit+ mutations, he could single handedly pay off the US debt of $40,000,000,000,000. www.npr.org/2026/08/19/n...
Zachary Blount with giant stacks of petri dishes used in his research on historical contingency and the evolution of citrate use in the LTEE.
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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 · 19/08/2026
Quite so, but he's a big professor, so most Guardian readers are going to believe that it IS a fact. That's why you need to get in the ring!
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
... and why is it always fucking Stanford?
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Comments were not allowed on the article. Have you contacted the Guardian to publish a rebuttal?
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Dorian McILROY @dmcilroy.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Best hypothesis out there.
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