Professor Judith Breuer

Professor of Virology

About

Research in the Breuer lab focusses on the application of next generation sequencing and phylogentics to virus diagnostics and discovery.

Research summary

My laboratory has pioneered whole pathogen genome sequencing directly form clinical material using targeted enrichment methods which obviate the need for prior amplification by culture or PCR. We have established the method as an automated high throughput pipeline with associated bioinformatics.

Our research interests include:

1. The evolution of pathogens in the context of disease, drug treatment and vaccination
2. The application of next generation sequencing methodologies to diagnostic microbiology
3. Genomic approaches to host pathogen interactions.

Our current projects include:

1. Genomic approaches to understand the evolution of drug resistance in pathogens and identify the mechanisms of drug action
2. Genomic approaches to understanding the transmission and spread of pathogens
3. Genomic approaches to pathogenesis of infectious diseases.

Selected publications

• Depledge DP, Ouwendijk WJD, Sadaoka T, Braspenning SE, Mori Y, Cohrs RJ, Verjans GMGM, Breuer J. A spliced latency-associated VZV transcript maps antisense to the viral transactivator gene 61. Nat Commun. 2018. 9(1):1167
• Morfopoulou S, Mee ET, Connaughton SM, Brown JR, Gilmour K, Chong WK, Duprex WP, Ferguson D, Hubank M, Hutchinson C, Kaliakatsos M, McQuaid S, Paine S, Plagnol V, Ruis C, Virasami A, Zhan H, Jacques TS, Schepelmann S, Qasim W, Breuer J. Deep sequencing reveals persistence of cell-associated mumps vaccine virus in chronic encephalitis. Acta Neuropathol. 2017. 133(1):139-147
• Sadaoka T, Depledge DP, Rajbhandari L, Venkatesan A, Breuer J, Cohen JI. In vitro system using human neurons demonstrates that varicella-zoster vaccine virus is impaired for reactivation, but not latency. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016. 113(17):E2403-12
• Morfopoulou S, Brown JR, Davies EG, Anderson G, Virasami A, Qasim W, Chong WK, Hubank M, Plagnol V, Desforges M, Jacques TS, Talbot PJ, Breuer J. Human Coronavirus OC43 Associated with Fatal Encephalitis. N Engl J Med. 2016. 375(5):497-8
• Depledge DP, Kundu S, Jensen NJ, Gray ER, Jones M, Steinberg S, Gershon A, Kinchington PR, Schmid DS, Balloux F, Nichols RA, Breuer J. Deep sequencing of viral genomes provides insight into the evolution and pathogenesis of varicella zoster virus and its vaccine in humans. Mol Biol Evol. 2014. 31(2):397-409
• Weinert LA, Depledge DP, Kundu S, Gershon AA, Nichols RA, Balloux F, Welch JJ, Breuer J. Rates of vaccine evolution show strong effects of latency: implications for varicella zoster virus epidemiology. Mol Biol Evol. 2015. 32(4):1020-8
• Jones M, Dry IR, Frampton D, Singh M, Kanda RK, Yee MB, Kellam P, Hollinshead M, Kinchington PR, O'Toole EA, Breuer J. RNA-seq analysis of host and viral gene expression highlights interaction between varicella zoster virus and keratinocyte differentiation. PLoS Pathog. 2014. 10(1):e1003896
• Brown JR, Roy S, Ruis C, Yara Romero E, Shah D, Williams R, Breuer J. Norovirus Whole-Genome Sequencing by SureSelect Target Enrichment: a Robust and Sensitive Method. J Clin Microbiol. 2016. 54:2530-7
• Houldcroft CJ, Beale MA, Breuer J. Clinical and biological insights from viral genome sequencing. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2017.15(3):183-192
• Warren-Gash C, Breuer J. CNS Infections: A new herpes zoster subunit vaccine for older adults. Nat Rev Neurol. 2016. 12(12):682-683.