
Professor David Matthews
B.Sc. (Hons), M.Sc.(Warw.), Ph.D.(St.And.)
Current positions
Professor of Virology
School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Contact
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Research interests
I am primarily interested in virus host cell interactions with an emphasis on respiratory viruses, in particular adenovirus, but also coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and Hendra virus. I have been looking at how these viruses interact with the host cell using state of the art techniques including laser confocal microscopy, high throughput quantitative mass spectrometry and Deep Sequencing (or Next Generation Sequencing) of virus infected cells. In collaboration with Prof Davidson here at Bristol we also apply these techniques to the study of Dengue virus.
Most recently we have become very interested in the study of novel zoonotic agents such as SARS CoV-2, Hendra, MERS CoV and Ebola. We are at the forefront of developing novel intergrated high throughput methods to study these very dangerous viruses in their natural hosts (bats) to try to understand why they are apparently harmless to their natural host but highly lethal in humans.
In addition, we also use these high throughput approaches to study recombinant gene therapy systems (especially adenovirus based ones). This includes an emphasis on the molecular basis of oncolytic or cancer killing adenoviruses.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
SARS-CoV-2 genetic diversity and stability in the presence of neutralizing antibodies and antivirals
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Cellular and Molecular MedicineDates
02/11/2020 to 01/05/2021
Enabling advanced analytics for all users of the proteomics facility
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Bristol Veterinary SchoolDates
01/01/2018 to 08/06/2021
Adapting high throughput technologies to understand the process of viral zoonosis
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Cellular and Molecular MedicineDates
04/01/2016 to 03/01/2020
costs for Conrads TRDF
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Physiology, Pharmacology & NeuroscienceDates
01/06/2015 to 31/05/2016
Publications
Selected publications
28/07/2020Characterisation of the transcriptome and proteome of SARS-CoV-2 reveals a cell passage induced in-frame deletion of the furin-like cleavage site from the spike glycoprotein
Genome Medicine
De novo derivation of proteomes from transcriptomes for transcript and protein identification
Nature Methods
SARS-CoV-2 vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 infection of human cell lines reveals low levels of viral backbone gene transcription alongside very high levels of SARS-CoV-2 S glycoprotein gene transcription
Genome Medicine
Recent publications
12/02/2025Examining the feasibility of replacing ORF3a with fluorescent genes to construct SARS-CoV-2 reporter viruses
Journal of General Virology
Using minor variant genomes and machine learning to study the genome biology of SARS-CoV-2 over time
Nucleic Acids Research
Impact of voluntary risk-mitigation behaviour on transmission of the Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant in England
Direct RNA sequencing of Respiratory Syncytial Virus infected human cells generates a detailed overview of RSV polycistronic mRNA and transcript abundance.
PLoS ONE
Nanopore ReCappable sequencing maps SARS-CoV-2 5′ capping sites and provides new insights into the structure of sgRNAs
Nucleic Acids Research