Nelly Mak

Thanks @stratechscientific.bsky.social for expanding my @giantmicrobes.bsky.social collection! Loving my new ssRNA friend :)

Virtual Virology is back - our first ever phage session. Do join us...

Influenza of avian origin confirmed in a sheep in Yorkshire Influenza of avian origin (H5N1) has been confirmed in a single sheep in Yorkshire.

H5N1 made it’s jump into sheep in the UK 🐑 #zoonosis

www.gov.uk/government/n...

Got promoted to @richardsloanlab.bsky.social alumni last week 🎉🍾
Thank you Toshana and Paul for joining the people-who’s-read-my-thesis club, and for good discussions at the viva! #phdone

Time to make myself useful with the new title and new project!

My first first-author paper is out! If you are curious about how alternative splicing fine-tunes the antiviral specificity of IFITMs in horseshoe bats, make this the last paper you will read in 2024⬇️

I joined @jollylab.bsky.social at UCL as a postdoc this week! Still getting used to being in central London but I won’t complain about having pubs/restaurants only a few minutes away.

GitHub - marcomaroni-github/twitter-to-bluesky: Import all tweets exported from X/Twitter to a Bluesky account. Import all tweets exported from X/Twitter to a Bluesky account. - marcomaroni-github/twitter-to-bluesky

Successfully migrated all my previous tweets to this account using github.com/marcomaroni-... - woohoo! Seem to have lost the original posting dates for now but at least you can find out more about me by scrolling down👇🏻

Guaranteed excellent supervisors - apply! https://twitter.com/RichardSloanLab/status/1857262571138453756

Thank you Dr. Marjolein Kikkert for inviting me to present at their virology lab meeting in-person at @UniLeiden today! Great way to wrap up my Edinburgh-Leiden jointly funded PhD. 📷: “The One Who Waits” in the LUMC hospital lobby.

Lunchtime break from thesis writing. My toggl tracker says I’ve already spent 150 hours on it 😳 ✨Featuring very cute Lumie socks from @promega - thanks @MichaelaNoskov5 @promegauk !

Thanks to everyone who came to my talk and for all the questions/suggestions!! Here’s a photo of me and THE IFITM experts @YountLabOSU @compton_lab #ASV2024

Catch my talk at *2:45pm Union station C today*. I’ll be talking about our preprint but ALSO some new computational stuff on diversification strategies of immune genes🤓 #ASV2024

Here we goooo #ASV2024 Great start with the satellite symposiums this morning. Loved @hannahkfrank’s talk on whether bats are special - they are (I knew it!) 🤩

We made it to Columbus!! Got to get some rest now so I’ll be recharged for the satellite symposium tomorrow morning #ASV2024

Me & @oceanchau left Edinburgh >24h ago to travel to #ASV2024. After a missed connection, 3 flight cancellations, 10h at the airport and 2h running around for a hotel room…we are still in NYC without our bags. I hope we make it there for our talks😭 @AmerSocVirol

The #3MT competition has been an incredibly fun and rewarding journey! Thank you to my very supportive friends and family, and congratulations to all who competed today🫶🏻 I guess I’ll go work on my actual thesis now…🙈
#UOE3MT24 @UoE_IAD @EdinburghUni

I’ll be taking part in the Edinburgh 3MT finals tomorrow along with 8 other brilliant finalists from @cmvm_research @EdinUniCAHSSres @ColSciEng . Come join us - good content guaranteed 😉 https://twitter.com/UoE_IAD/status/1796120304630026447

A bit late but yesterday’s #GlasgowVirologyWorkshop was again a great meeting with lovely people. Best parts were Sole from @RichardSloanLab winning the best talk, the ceilidh and finally meeting @lucygthorne :)

My little cousin (10yo) has been obsessed with drawing ducks recently, and she drew me this yesterday🐥🥼

Heard from many brilliant PhD students in the college heat of the Three Minute Thesis competition @3MT_official today. See you at the Edinburgh university finals! 😉
@UoE_IAD @cmvm_research

Another fantastic @MicrobioSoc conference done🎉 Feels very different this year with the conference centre just a bus ride away from my flat 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Thanks for all the good chats and especially those who visited my poster! #Microbio24

And if you’re interested in a very cool cyanobacteria-derived broad-spectrum antiviral, my amazing colleague Sole Lancerin is presenting at 12:21 @Kilsyth (level 0) today @RichardSloanLab 🧫🦠

I’ll be at *poster B416* today to tell you all about bat IFITMs (as always) AND a recent project on functional diversification of immune genes by duplication & splicing! 🦇🧬✂️ #Microbio24

🙌🏻THANK YOU to everyone who made this possible! @jtaylor_tweets @NJTemperton | @BatResearch @ZJE_institute for cool bat cell work | @compton_lab for my wonderful time at @theNCI | & @RichardSloanLab @EdinUni_IRR for the opportunity to take on this PhD in the first place! 7/7🧵

⏭️ Constitutive expression of IFITMs in bat cells could contribute to their effective antiviral defences. While convergent evolution to expand IFITMs’ functional diversity highlights their central role in innate immunity. 🦹🏻‍♀️💪🏻 6/7

🔬🦠 The two bat IFITM isoforms have structurally conserved amphipathic helices, a critical motif for IFITMs’ antiviral activity. They inhibited Influenza A virus and coronaviruses with different potencies, suggesting functional specialisation. 4/7

🧬 We studied IFITMs in Chinese horseshoe bats owing to their role as natural hosts of SARS-CoVs. Two alternatively spliced IFITM isoforms with distinct N-termini were found in these bats. 3/7

👩🏻‍🔬 Antiviral IFITM proteins are key players of innate immunity and could contribute to zoonotic barriers, but little is known about non-human IFITMs. Meanwhile, bats are important reservoir species and there is immense interest to understand their unique antiviral defences. 2/7

I applied for a US visa (with my Hong Kong passport) to attend the @AmerSocVirol conference, but it was denied for further processing despite my pile of supporting documents at the interview… Has anyone experienced something similar?

I’m just trying to go to a conference🥲