Dr. Bruce Seal is the Research Leader for the Poultry Microbiological Safety Research Unit at the Russell Research Center for the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and holds an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Medical Microbiology & Parasitology in the College of Veterinary Medicine. The Safety Research Unit is involved with Salmonella, Campylobacter and Clostridia.

Dr. Seal has been highly adaptable in his approaches to studying a variety of viral agents that infect many different agriculturally important, exotic or companion animal species. This included conducting molecular analyses of bovine herpesvirus I isolates from various disease syndromes both during Dr. Seal's doctoral studies and while at the National Animal Disease Center in the Virology Cattle Unit. Dr. Seal studied alcelaphine herpesviruses, the causative agent of malignant catarrhal fever in domestic and exotic bovids, at the Zoological Society of San Diego. Dr. Seal used molecular genetic approaches to demonstrate unequivocally that there are two types of alcelaphine herpesviruses and the causative agent of this disease is a wildebeest-associated virus.

A second similar virus isolated from antelope related to wildebeest was determined to be genetically distinct and does not cause disease. As a Lead Scientist in the Virology Swine Unit of NADC, Dr. Seal demonstrated that although the causative agent of vesicular exanthema of swine is closely related to caliciviruses carried by sea lions, the disease is not present among commercial swine.

During 1993, Dr. Seal was reassigned as the molecular virologist to the Avian Paramyxovirus Project at the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory. Highly virulent Newcastle disease virus is a List A agent and much of the current research has been adapted to high-security bio-containment. As a result of his investigations, the molecular epidemiology of exotic NDV has been extensively characterized.

More recently, Dr. Seal was the first investigator to publish molecular characterizations of the newly emergent U.S. isolate of avian metapneumovirus which was until 1996 considered exotic to North America. Dr. Seal also completed post-doctoral work at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine prior to joining the ARS. Dr. Seal helped utilize innovative molecular approaches to examine differential gene expression in T-cell lymphomas that exhibited different levels of tumorigenicity and T-cell development. Dr. Seal began his research career by defining defensible standards for boron in drinking water and has been referenced by the Environmental Protection Agency to establish drinking water standards.

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