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...

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.

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!) 🤩

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

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

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🥲

Celebrating the launch of @EdinUni_IRR at the #IRRlaunch symposium. Good to see the breadth of research in the new building! 🚚📦<2 weeks till we move

Congratulations Pujitha!! So proud of you and very excited for your new chapter, you’ll be missed! https://twitter.com/RajaPujitha/status/1654628095326814210

Another fab @MicrobioSoc conference, but as a speaker this time - thanks to all organisers! So happy to walk away with fruitful science chats and new friends. #microbio23

Talk at #microsoc23 - done! @SoleLancerin from our lab @RichardSloanLab is presenting her poster on how extracellular polysaccharides from cyanobacteria is antiviral - now at P796 !!!

Day 2 at #microbio23! Hear @compton_lab talk about how primate IFITMs *enhance* SARS-CoV-2 today (3pm in Hall 8A).🐒 And I’ll talk about bat IFITMs tomorrow morning.

New review from @jtaylor_tweets @RichardSloanLab on the pleiotropic effects of IFITMs. Have a read to find out what IFITMs do apart from their day job in restricting viruses. https://twitter.com/RichardSloanLab/status/1595753381552848896

Check out this opportunity to join our lab in Edinburgh to study the coolest (in my opinion) antiviral protein! Feel free to reach out with any questions :) https://twitter.com/RichardSloanLab/status/1588126990036598787

Reunited with @gadiscymraes in Chicago and tried some Garrett popcorn🍿 So happy that you’re enjoying the new job and see you at conferences next year!

Belated congratulations to @SophiaFochler who taught me how to pipette and gave me an awesome lab experience, it means a lot to me🫶🏻🎉 https://twitter.com/Gluenzlab/status/1577952934171656192

I number code my experiments and today I was finishing Expt#100 which did not work. Oh well, at least the sky is blue?

1.5 years into my PhD and I finally did some plaque assays, one step closer to being a virologist?

Got my visa to spend some time at @compton_lab in the NIH later this year! Super excited to visit the states and learn some cool techniques🤩 Thank you @MicrobioSoc for awarding me the research visit grant to support this project.

Gave my first symposium talk yesterday at @roslininstitute - thank you @edin_EID for the opportunity! And they say I’m good at hiding my nerves🙊

Excited to be giving a lightning talk and presenting a poster today! And don’t forget to check out @SoleLancerin’s poster and @RichardSloanLab’s talk if you’re interested in antiviral stuff! https://twitter.com/edin_EID/status/1539544436442599425

Gutted to have missed this due to covid after all the prep…but super pleased to hear that the kids had fun! Couldn’t have developed this workshop from scratch without the team - big thanks to @DrSamGriffiths @RichardSloanLab @ThamaraiSch @MartinvdpID https://t.co/5xZZRhMPmg

Amazing talks, great chats at the poster session aaaaand a prize!? Best first conference ever😍😍 #Microbio22 https://twitter.com/MicrobioSoc/status/1511788336880492547

Come see my poster B084 in the #Microbio22 main poster hall this evening if you want to hear about how antiviral IFITMs may play a role in bats as viral reservoirs! 🦇@MicrobioSoc

Super excited to be heading to Belfast for my first in-person conference soon! Thank you @MicrobioSoc for letting me present my work on IFITM proteins - come say hi at my poster B084 on Wed or have a sneak peak here http://l.ead.me/nellymak 🦠🦇#Microbio22

Got to get that booster in!💉 https://investors.biontech.de/static-files/47b4131a-0545-4a0b-a353-49b3a1d01789

Keep your masks on everyone - they keep you warm in the freezing weather too ⚠️🙊 https://twitter.com/BBCScotlandNews/status/1465231151702941698

Huge congratulations to @siran_zhu for passing her viva! 🎉🍾 Extremely happy for you but also very sad that you’re leaving us - now I have one less person to turn to when my experiments don’t work😭

Today I gave my first talk and heard from many other brilliant young scientists in the Edinburgh Infectious Diseases Early Career Researcher Symposium. Thank you @edin_EID for the opportunity!

“My fear is that we will forget what we have been through.” - Dr. Tony Fauci Viral outbreak is a recurring theme, therefore we must remember the very painful lessons the current pandemic has taught us. Excellent session earlier today in #EdinburghFuturesConversations !!

These and many other viruses circulate in bats, and can spillover to humans, which is why it’s important to understand their host-pathogen relationships🦇🦠 https://twitter.com/sci_questions/status/1366074512215834628

#HongKong is vaccinating 60+ elderly with #coronavac next week despite limited efficacy in phase 3 trials. Unpublished data shows an overall vaccine efficacy of 50.65%. Efficacy in 60+ age group was insignificant (51%; 95%CI: -116.93, 91.04).🤨🤷🏻‍♀️

Just completed week 1 of the very useful @FutureLearn course 'Bioinformatics for Biologists'! Really excited for two more weeks of this and to upgrade from a newbie to a beginner in coding😎💻 https://t.co/3aMpD3YvwL #FLLinuxForBioinformatics

Look at this beauty! I’m so fascinated by the fine details of electron microscopy images like this one. https://twitter.com/Virus_Immunity/status/1361617709629378562