Matt Simon

Biography:

Matt graduated from the University of Delaware in 2005 with a B.A. in Biological Sciences. Although often confused with being obsessed with environmental RNA viruses, his true passion is for teeth. Matt will be attending the University of Buffalo School of Dental Medicine in the Fall of 2006. He has hopes of applying his knowledge of viruses in the field of dental research.

Research Interests:

I have developed approaches to extract and identify viral RNA from environmental samples. Initial attempts used reverse-transcription PCR (RT-PCR) with degenerate primers targeting conserved regions of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene (an almost exclusively viral gene). However, this approach was unsuccessful in detecting RdRp from Infectious Bursal Disease Virus in control or environmental samples. This result suggests that the degenerate RdRp primer set may not be as capable of sampling RNA viral diversity as originally thought. In a second approach, random hexamers and oligo-dT were used in conjunction with (RT-PCR) to amplify RNA of positive-sense single stranded RNA ((+)ssRNA) viruses. Avian Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) was used as a positive control for RNA extraction and RT-PCR. IBV-specific primers were used to amplify IBV from spiked water samples and PCR products of the expected size were detected. Alternatively, IBV cDNA was used as a template in randomly amplified polymorphic DNA-PCR (RAPD-PCR). Several products were detected from RAPD-PCR. Sequencing confirmed that RAPD-PCR amplicons were identical to IBV, demonstrating that random amplification of viral RNA is possible. Further experiments utilized decamers, designed from IBV sequence, to probe environmental samples from the Chesapeake Bay. RNA viral sequence was detected at varying locations in the bay from several different months during the year. This confirmed that (+)ssRNA viruses could be detected and subsequently amplified using a strictly random approach.

Presentations:

Simon, M.S., K.E. Williamson and K.E. Wommack. 2005. Detection and identification of RNA viruses in the environment using randomly primed RT-PCR. American Society for Microbiology, Atlanta, GA.

Simon, M.S., K.E. Williamson and K.E. Wommack. 2004. Quantification of aquatic RNA viruses from a mixed viral sample. Delaware Water Resource Center Symposium, Newark, DE.

Simon, M.S., K.E. Williamson and K.E. Wommack. 2004. Enumeration of aquatic RNA viruses from a mixed viral sample. National Institutes of Health Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (NIH-BRIN) Symposium, Newark, DE.