Matthew D. Moore | Department of Food Science

Assistant Professor

Field of Study:

Food microbiology; food and environmental virology; eukaryotic virus-bacteria interactions; portable detection and sequencing platforms; viral inactivation strategies and therapeutics; viral concentration techniques.

Office:

Room 250, Chenoweth Laboratory

Telephone:

413-545-1019

Email:

mdmoore@umass.edu

Details

Research

My research primarily focuses on food safety microbiology; especially with a focus on foodborne viruses. Foodborne viruses are the leading cause of foodborne illnesses, especially human noroviruses. These viruses impose a severe public health and economic burden globally every year. Human noroviruses are responsible for over 200,000 deaths globally every year—many of which are children under the age of 5—and impose an economic burden in the billions of dollars. Our lab’s research can be divided into a few broad categories:

1. Eukaryotic Virus-Bacteria Interactions. A number of reports have suggested there is a relationship between viruses that infect eukaryotic cells and the native bacterial flora present on/around the tissues that the viruses infect. This is especially true for the human gut. There is some suggestion that some native enteric bacteria may play a role in assisting infection of some enteric viruses—including human noroviruses. Additionally, there are some reports that binding to bacterial cellular membrane components may stabilize enteric viruses, and make them harder to inactivate. Conversely, there is some evidence that other bacteria may have an antiviral effect. Our lab is conducting research to explain this discrepancy and further understand the nature of eukaryotic virus-bacteria interactions in the gut.

2. Novel Viral Concentration Methods from Food and Environmental Samples. Food- and waterborne viruses are present in contaminated samples at low levels and not evenly dispersed throughout the samples. Unlike bacteria, an enrichment step for routine food and environmental testing is not feasible for viruses; thus a small amount of viruses must be concentrated from large, complex samples. Our lab is doing research on cheap, efficient ways of concentrating viruses from foods for detection.

3. Rapid, Portable Point-of-Service/In-Field Testing Methods for Foodborne Viruses. Humans are the recognized reservoir for human noroviruses; thus a lot of transmission is attributable to person-to-person spread, especially in confined settings. The majority of cases of foodborne human norovirus illness occur in complex, prepared foods, and most outbreaks are traced to restaurant or similar service settings. In both instances, the current methods for detection of viruses are either not portable or not sensitive enough for realistic use in these settings. Our lab will be doing work on developing methods that allow for sensitive “lab-in-a-suitcase” methods for detection of human noroviruses and other foodborne viruses that allow for rapid detection of virus from sample in less than 30 minutes without the need for an electrical grid. These methods would also have value in low resource settings, where detection and control of viral outbreaks is essential for reducing severe health outcomes. Additionally, our lab will focus on portable sequencing platforms for these viruses, as following evolutionary trends can provide valuable data for control and prediction of emerging viral strains of concern.

4. Novel Viral Inactivation Strategies and Therapeutics. Human noroviruses have been found to be fairly resistant to many disinfectants. Bleach at fairly high levels has been shown to be effective, but is often not used because of its effects on certain materials. Our lab will investigate application of novel disinfectants on human noroviruses and understand the effect of soil load on the efficacy of those disinfectants. Our lab will also be involved in developing therapeutics to a human norovirus protein necessary for replication; the ultimate goal of this area of research would be to develop an inexpensive, edible therapeutic that has little residual effects on the host.

Teaching

FOOD-SCI 391C: Junior Year Writing, 3 Credits

FOOD-SCI 797V: Biosensors and Pathogen Detection, 1 Credit (Journal Club)

Awards

Service to Scientific Community and Awards

Honors and Awards since 2014:

2018 International Union of Food Science and Technology Young Scientist Award (one of seven winners from field of international candidates)

2018 International Academy of Food Science and Technology, Early Career Scientist Inductee

2018 IFT Emerging Leaders Network

2018-Now American Society for Microbiology Young Ambassador from Massachusetts

2016 American Society for Microbiology Outstanding Student Abstract

2015 International Association for Food Protection Student Travel Scholarship

2014 International Association for Food Protection Developing Scientist Poster Competition (1^stPlace)

2014-2016 Co-author on five other poster/technical presentation wins by collaborators

Service to Scientific Community:

Editorial Board, and Management Committee, Journal of Food Protection (2019-)

Editorial Advisory Board, Food Science and Technology Abstracts (2019-)

Editor, Foodborne Viruses: Properties, Detection, and Control. Royal Society of Chemistry. Textbook. (In Preparation, 2019-)

Review Editor: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Agro Food Safety Section (2018-)

Guest Editor: High Throughput, “High Throughput Techniques for Enteric Viruses” (2018-)

American Society for Microbiology, ASM Young Ambassador from Massachusetts (2018-2021)

World Society for Virology

- Founding Treasurer and Co-Director, member of Training and Career Development Committee (2017-Present); https://ws-virology.org/

Institute of Food Technologists, New Professionals Working Group (2019-)

International Union of Food Science and Technology, Member: Global Food Safety and Finance Committees (2018-)

Grant Proposal Review Panelist: USDA NIFA Small Business Innovation Research Program (1 year) and Higher Education Challenge Program (1 year)

Peer reviewer 24 times in 2018 and 6 times so far in 2019, for journals including:

-Microbial Pathogenesis; Archives of Virology; Molecular Immunology; Frontiers in Microbiology; Food Control; Viruses; Food Research International; Pathogens; Journal of Advances in Microbiology; Toxins; Microbiology Open; PLoS One; Water; Present Knowledge in Food Safety and Antimicrobials in Food (textbook proposals, CRC Press); ad hoc reviewer for the Journal of Food Protection

Organizer and convener for seven International Association for Food Protection Annual Meeting sessions/roundtables

Chair: IAFP Developing Food Safety Professionals PDG

Initiative Advisor: Animal Digestible Food Packaging Initiative (2018-)

Publications

Publications:

1. Escudero-Abarca BI, Suh SH, Moore MD, Dwivedi HP, Jaykus L-A. 2014. Selection, Characterization and Application of Nucleic Acid Aptamers for the Capture and Detection of Human Norovirus. PloS One 9(9):e106805.

2. Moore MD, Goulter RM, Jaykus L-A. 2015. Human Norovirus as a Foodborne Pathogen: Challenges and Developments. Annual Reviews in Food Science and Technology 6(1): 411-413.

3. Moore MD, Escudero-Abarca BI, Suh S, Jaykus L-A. 2015. Generation and Characterization of Nucleic Acid Aptamers Targeting the Capsid P Domain of a Human Norovirus GII.4 Strain. Journal of Biotechnology 209:41-49.

4. Manuel C, Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2015. Rapid Destruction of Human Norovirus Capsid and Genome Occurs during Exposure to Copper-containing Surfaces. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 81(15): 4940-4946.

5. Moore MD, Bobay BG, Mertens B, Jaykus L-A. 2016. Human Norovirus Aptamer Exhibits High Degree of Target Conformation-Dependent Binding Similar to that of Receptors and Discriminates Particle Functionality. mSphere 1(6): e00289-16.

6. Manuel C, Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Inactivation of GI.6 and GII.4 Human Norovirus by Silver Dihydrogen Citrate. Journal of Applied Microbiology 122(1):78-86.

7. Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Development of a Recombinase Polymerase Amplification Assay for Detection of Epidemic Human Noroviruses. Scientific Reports 7:40244.

8. Almand EA, Moore MD, Outlaw J, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Human Norovirus Binding to Select Bacteria Representative of the Human Gut Microbiota. PLoS One. 12(3): e01724.

9. Almand EA, Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Virus-Bacteria Interactions: An Emerging Topic in Human Infection. Viruses 9(3): 58-68.

10. Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2017. A Plate-Based Histo-Blood Group Antigen Binding Assay for Evaluation of Human Norovirus Receptor Binding Affinity. Analytical Biochemistry 533: 56-59.

11. Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Recombinase Polymerase Amplification: A Promising Point-of-Care Detection Method for Enteric Viruses. Future Virology 12(8): 421-429.

12. Moore MD, Mertens BS, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Alternative In Vitro Methods for the Determination of Viral Capsid Structural Integrity. Journal of Visual Experimentation e56444.

13. Almand E, Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Norovirus Binding to Ligands Beyond Histo-Blood Group Antigen Ligands. Frontiers in Microbiology 8: 2549.

14. Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2018. Virus-Bacteria Interactions: Implications and Potential for the Applied Sciences. Viruses, Special Issue, “Virus-Bacteria Interactions in the Gut,” 10(2): 61.

15. Abdel-Moneim A, Varma A, Pujol F, Lewis G, Paweska J, Romalde J, Moore MD, Söderlund-Venermo M, Nevels M, Vakharia V, Joshi V, Malik Y, Shi Z-L, Memish Z. 2018. Launching a Global Network of Virologists: The World Society for Virology (WSV). Intervirology 62511:1-2.

16. Suh SH, Choi SJ, Dwivedi HP, Moore MD, Escudero-Abarca BI, Jaykus L-A. 2018. Use of a DNA Aptamer for Sandwich Type Detection of Listeria monocytogenes. Analytical Biochemistry 557:27-33.

17. Manuel C, Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2018. Predicting Human Norovirus Infectivity: Recent Advances and Continued Challenges. Food Microbiology 76:337-345.

18. Tagg KA, Watkins LF, Moore MD, Bennett C, Chen JC, Folster JP. 2018. Novel Trimethoprim Resistance Gene dfrA34 identified in Salmonella Heidelberg in the USA. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, dky373.

19. Kamarasu P, Hsu H, Moore MD. 2018. Research Progress in Viral Inactivation Utilizing Human Norovirus Surrogates. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 2:89.

20. Brown P, RELISH Consortium, Zhou Y. 2019. Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search. Database. (In Press).

21. Suther C, Moore MD. Quantification and discovery of PCR inhibitors found in food matrices commonly associated with foodborne viruses. Food Science and Human Wellness. (In Press).

22. Almand E, Moore MD, Shajahan A, Azadi P, Jaykus L-A. Determination and characterization of human norovirus binding to gut-associated bacteria and identification of candidate ligands involved. BMC Research Notes (In Press).

Other Publications:

1. Moore MD, Jaykus L-A. 2017. Use of an Enzyme-Linked Aptamer Sorbent Assay to Evaluate Aptamer Binding. Chapter. Synthetic Antibodies (Methods in Molecular Biology Series), Ed. Thomas Tiller, Vol. 1575: 291-302.

2. Jaykus L-A, Rawsthorne H, Escudero-Abarca BI, Moore MD. Aptamers with Binding Affinity to Norovirus. Patent. Patent application number 62/011,880. (Application Under Review).

3. Moore MD. 2019. Norovirus has some friends? Enteric bacterial interaction with noroviruses. Microbiology Today. (In Preparation).

4. Moore MD, Editor. Foodborne Viruses: Properties, Detection, and Control. Textbook, Royal Society of Chemistry. (In Preparation).

Full CV

Moore CV_9-20-19.pdf