Dorian McILROY
Virology lecturer at Nantes University. Interested in polyomaviruses, particularly capsid interactions with antibodies and host receptors.
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYMelania: The Movie From the new Private Eye, out now.
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYThere have been increasingly shrill accusations against the EU over its digital legislation, based on accusations of "censorship" by defenders of "free speech" -- including, so it appears, the right to peddle an AI app that seemingly produces child sexual abuse material (CSAM). 1/9
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYAmazing findings in geometry-based immune activation! Two bacterial defence systems detect phage-encoded ring oligomers, assemble high-order molecular complexes, and trigger abortive infection. www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYThe reason we pasteurize milk is because it prevents this kind of awful, needless death
- “Health officials in New Mexico are warning against consuming raw dairy products after a newborn baby in the state died from a listeria infection that they say was likely contracted when the baby's mother drank raw milk during pregnancy.” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social
- Fantastic - one more thing that finally makes sense! I always have trouble teaching phototrophy (cos it's a long way from my specialisation). This paper makes things comprehensible, not just a list of stuff to memorize.
- New paper out! Here's a puzzle: phototrophy, the ability to use light for energy, is one of life's great innovations. It evolved early and transformed the biosphere. But it evolved 2x. Why not just once, why not more? Our work suggests the answer is priority effects. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYAnd so it begins….
- 5 more dairy cows tested positive for #H5N1 #birdflu antibodies on the Dutch farm where a previous cow tested positive. No surprise that if 1 was positive, others would be too. This dairy farm is the first outside the US to report H5N1 transmission. www-melkvee-nl.translate.goog/artikel/1450...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYThis is finally out. Very short take home. All the variation in spike that produced the immune escape characteristics of Omicron can occur in one single persistently infected individual over the period of a year. This is why persistent infections matter www.cell.com/cell-reports...
- Most people in Europe / N. America can cut down meat consumption significantly, and would probably be healthier for it, too.
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- When typhus breaks out, ICE will have copied their role models to perfection.
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYYou know public health systems worked as intended when outbreaks of preventable disease don’t make headlines every week. 🧪 @kevinfenton
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- Reposted by Dorian McILROYWilliam Herbert Foege .... you should know him: one of the foremost persons responsible for eradicating smallpox. He died yesterday, January 24, 2026 ..... the day the USA pulled out of the WHO. It is all so terrible sad and stupid. www.nytimes.com/2026... 1/3
- I hope they improve Impress. It's got better, but is still a bit clunky.
- Our next major release is just around the corner! #LibreOffice 26.2 will be released in February, with many new features and improvements, thanks to our worldwide community. Help to test it, before the final release: qa.blog.documentfoundation.org/2026/01/20/l...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYThese peptides have not been shown to cure or treat anything. Safety hasn't been established. Yet, many of the people taking stacks of them, injecting into their bloodstream, are the same ones who are against vaccines. nymag.com/intelligence...
- Another twist in the fascinating interferon autoantibody story. Underlines once again just how important IFNs are for the outcome of acute viral infections. Come to think of it, I just have time to add this to my antiviral immunity lecture...
- 1/ We are excited to share our new report in PNAS: all three cases of encephalitis triggered by the live-attenuated chikungunya (CHIKV) vaccine (IXCHIQ®) are due to pre-existing autoantibodies neutralizing type I IFN (AAN-I-IFN) (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...).
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYScience: U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office By Jeffrey Mervis, Monica Hersher @science.org @policyhound.bsky.social @mghersher.bsky.social bit.ly/3M8yf9B
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYThis is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYInterested in high containment work on viruses? We have an opening at the Pirbright Institute, working on high consequence viruses of livestock and humans in the core CL3 team. isw.changeworknow.co.uk/pirbright/vm...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYAt least 16,500 protesters have been killed in Iran and more than 330,000 injured, The Sunday Times reports, citing a report by a network of Iranian doctors, human rights data, and eyewitness accounts.
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- Reposted by Dorian McILROYWant to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version? I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/ It all started a few years ago... 🧵
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYWe've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n
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- Reposted by Dorian McILROYOpen #postdoc fellowship in my group. Virus replication and cryo-ET. Projects can be tailored to ambitious candidates with diverse backgrounds, so don't hold back from applying! DM for more info. Deadline 8 Feb. Apply here: umustipendie.varbi.com/en/what:job/... #virus #virology #teamtomo #cryoEM
- Serious exam equipment this morning.
- Very interesting paper from the beautiful city of York, which provides a mechanistic explanation for the epidemiological link between BK polyomavirus infection/replication in kidney transplant recipients, and subsequent urothelial carcinoma. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41337590/
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYHere's a summary of all the data that supports adding more red meat to your diet
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- Reposted by Dorian McILROYVirus taxonomy increasingly rests on phylogenetic hypotheses, but the trees, alignments, and assumptions behind them are often ephemeral. This post explores what it might look like to make that phylogenetic basis transparent and reproducible, using retroviruses as a case study. shorturl.at/s9aft
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- True for every country
- Had a quick read of the preprint, and was surprised that they didn't discuss the anatomical site of the DNA sample. HPV16 only really found in genital mucosa (although circulating HPV16 DNA is there when cancer is present). Thoughts, anyone? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- 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.
- This is great! Conjugation without pili was always an annoying paradox, and this finding shows that things finally make sense.
- 📣New preprint with @rberntsson.bsky.social👇We overturn the long-standing view that Gram-positive bacteria lack conjugative pili! We identify pili-forming proteins in a wide range of bacteria and show they're essential for the spread of #antibioticresistance #AMR 🧵1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- And not only in the US - CDC and USAID resources are/were really, really useful for instructors everywhere.
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYThis is the "SEA SHEEP" (Costasiella kuroshimae) & it took the old axiom: "you are what you eat" VERY literally. It eats algae & rather than just digest them, it harvests the chloroplasts & becomes PHOTOSYNTHETIC. Solar slug! Also, some of its cousins can rip their own heads off.
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- This is a very important point.
- This looks good. Neutralising Abs block binding to the uncoating receptor. Similar to EVD68/MFSD6.
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[Not loaded yet] - Now that is good news! Very difficult to get UK partner universities, though.
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYHow exercise decreases the risk of cancer and cancer- related mortality by reducing immunosenescence and inflammaging www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYBecause the issue of population change is so widely misunderstood, here's a short thread which seeks to lay it out simply. It explains why there is almost nothing anyone can do to change the global population trajectory, both as numbers rise, then as they fall. 🧵1/13
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- I can honestly say that I, personally, am not publishing too much.
- We’re addicted to publishing, because the system made it our only currency. Read the post by The Open Fox, and subscribe if you like what you read. #AcademicSky #SciPub #PeerReview #PhDSky #AcademicChatter #OpenScience 🧪
- Please peruse this particularly pertinent paper on pesky penguin papilloma and polyomaviruses
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- Rabies transmission by kidney transplant - now that is really a freak event. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
- Reposted by Dorian McILROYFrom the @wsj.com chief foreign correspondent
- Good explainer of how this story is being oversold.
