I am a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Virology Division in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge working with Dr. Andrew Firth.
Biography
I have previously completed a Computational Genomics and Training (CGAT) fellowship at the University of Oxford and a PhD in endogenous retroviral evolution at the University of Nottingham.
Research
My main research focus is detecting novel and under-researched RNA viruses in non-model organisms, particularly insects and other arthropods, and characterising their evolution. I am also interested in software development for computational biology and have developed the tool CIAlign (github.com/KatyBrown/CIAlign) for cleaning and visualising multiple sequence alignments.
Publications
Identification of RNA Virus–Derived RdRp Sequences in Publicly Available Transcriptomic Data Sets
Identification of RNA virus-derived RdRp sequences in publicly available transcriptomic datasets
A novel map of human p53 response elements uncovers evidence of selection pressures and variants similar to Li-Fraumeni Syndrome mutations
Women in the European Virus Bioinformatics Center
Evaluating ribosomal frameshifting in CCR5 mRNA decoding
CIAlign: A highly customisable command line tool to clean, interpret and visualise multiple sequence alignments
Ribosome profiling of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus reveals novel features of viral gene expression
Germline and Somatic Genetic Variants in the p53 Pathway Interact to Affect Cancer Risk, Progression, and Drug Response
Ribosome profiling of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus reveals novel features of viral gene expression
Investigating molecular mechanisms of 2A-stimulated ribosomal pausing and frameshifting in Theilovirus
pUL21 is a viral phosphatase adaptor that promotes herpes simplex virus replication and spread
Manipulation of the unfolded protein response: A pharmacological strategy against coronavirus infection
pUL21 is a viral phosphatase adaptor that promotes herpes simplex virus replication and spread
CIAlign - A highly customisable command line tool to clean, interpret and visualise multiple sequence alignments
Investigating molecular mechanisms of 2A-stimulated ribosomal pausing and frameshifting in Theilovirus
Distinct roles of Argonaute in the green alga Chlamydomonas reveal evolutionary conserved mode of miRNA-mediated gene expression
ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile: Solinviviridae
CGAT-core: a python framework for building scalable, reproducible computational biology workflows
ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile: Polycipiviridae
Low-Bias RNA Sequencing of the HIV-2 Genome from Blood Plasma
Transcriptional and Translational Landscape of Equine Torovirus
Is gibbon ape leukaemia virus still a threat?
Multiple Groups of Endogenous Epsilon-Like Retroviruses Conserved across Primates
Characterisation of a group of endogenous gammaretroviruses in the canine genome
Characterisation of retroviruses in the horse genome and their transcriptional activity via transcriptome sequencing.
Teaching and Supervisions
2024/2025:
- Foundations of phylogenetic inference - Training Lead, Trainer
2022/2023:
- SARS-CoV-2 Genomics - Training Lead
2021/2022:
- SARS-CoV-2 Genomics - Training Lead