Francois Balloux

@[email protected]
2.8K Followers
113 Following
13 Posts
Director of the UCL Genetics Institute. Interests in pathogen genomics, infectious disease epidemiology and global health.
Show threadFrancois BallouxNov 9, 2022
Both rapid expansion of naive T-cell clones and 'cross-immune-primed' T-cells are most likely genuine mechanisms, but the newly described one, if its importance were to be more widely confirmed, may represent quite some scientific paradigm shift.
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Show threadFrancois BallouxNov 9, 2022
The early immune response due to rapid expansion of naive T-cell clones is a distinct, non-mutually exclusive, mechanism from prior cross-immunisation provided by infection with a related viral lineage (eg. SARS-CoV-2 and endemic HCoVs).
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Show threadFrancois BallouxNov 9, 2022
If some of the abundant naive T-cell clones happen by chance to recognise epitopes of an invading virus, they can expand fast enough to control and abort the infection, sometimes possibly even before seroconversion (ie. antibodies kicking in).
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Show threadFrancois BallouxNov 9, 2022
We all have a large repertoire of naive T-cell precursor clones that recognise different bits of pathogens (epitopes). The relative frequency of those populations of clones is highly variable, with some being far more common than others.
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Francois BallouxNov 9, 2022
New preprint suggesting that rapid expansion of naive T cells can provide a fast and effective immune response to SARS-CoV-2, and likely other viral infections.
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https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.08.515436v1
Francois BallouxNov 7, 2022
𝚃𝚘𝚖 𝙻𝚊𝚠𝚝𝚘𝚗 Nov 7, 2022

Closing date this Friday - come and work with us in Bradford looking at #ArtificialIntelligence in #healthcare - in conjunction with the University of York Assuring Autonomy International Programme.

#MedTwitter #MedMastodon

https://www.improvementacademy.org/clinical-leadership-fellows-2023/

Francois BallouxNov 7, 2022

I recognise so many names on Mastodon, including people I fell out during the pandemic sometimes over fairly trivial differences of views.

I often wonder to what extent those conflicts were primarily caused by the toxic nature of twitter.

Anyway, I'm not planning to continue fighting Covid wars on here, and would welcome patching up our pandemic differences with anyone so inclined.

#Covid #twitter #polarization

Francois BallouxNov 7, 2022
James Ferguson Nov 7, 2022

Hey everyone. Just making sure everyone knows that direct messages on here are not end-to-end encrypted. They work more like a post, with visibility set to the person/people you tag.

This means an admin (like me), can read these by looking at the database/in backups.

I promise never to do this.

If that's not good enough (which is fine, obviously), please use something like signal for DMs

p.s. Twitter DMs are also not encrypted and anyone there can read them too.

Francois BallouxNov 7, 2022
CJ Stevens - MetaphysiologyNov 7, 2022

Twitter seems, quite insidiously, to have turned even academics who, in their professional work, would be very careful to demonstrate critical thinking, into mere hot take criticizers.

Opening dialogue is a much more fruitful and genuinely "critical" road than merely expressing critical opinions. So, though I'm not expecting any miracles, why don't we try to leave the hot takes back where we came from and make an effort to engage in inquiry and opening dialogue.

Happy Mastodon Monday folks!

Francois BallouxNov 6, 2022

Hi All,

I'm Francois Balloux, a computational biologist and infectious disease epidemiologist. My research focuses on understanding the drivers and correlates of pathogen host range and their adaptation to different hosts.

I don't anticipate to reproduce the 'Twitter experience' on Mastodon, but hope I can experience the positive aspects of Twitter (learning new stuff and having stimulating discussions) without the relentless toxicity and abuse.

#introduction