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Academic Staff

Academic Staff Research Interests and Expertise
- Translational recoding including programmed ribosomal frameshifting, translational bypassing and codon redefinition.
- Stop codons specifying a standard amino acid (readthrough), UGA specifying selenocysteine, uncommon start codons and the StopGo utilized in Foot and Mouth Disease virus expression.
- Deep earth life and RNA World issues.
- Bioinformatics
- Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics
- Culture-independent approaches to understanding Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- Bacteria-host interactions
- Biofilm formation
- Signaling in bacteria
- Applied Microbiology
- Environmental Biotechnology
- Marine Biotechnology
- Physiology and genetics of bacteria and fungi from marine and terrestrial Environments
- Functional Metagenomics
- Food Mycology/Genetics of Mycotoxigenic fungi
- Eukaryotic microbes/Cell Biology.
- Biochemistry, physiology and genetics of Lactic Acid Bacteria
- Probiotic cultures - fundamental analysis and applications in foods
- Genomics of Bifidobacterium
- Bacteriophage resistance in Lactococcus: fundamental analysis of resistance systems and their application in the construction of phage resistant cultures
- Molecular genetics of bacteriophage of Lactococcus
- Antimicrobials of Lactic Acid Bacteria as biopreservatives of foods
- Development of live bacterial vaccine and DNA delivery vectors
- Understanding microbial pathogenesis (Listeria monocytogenes & Clostridium difficile)
- Culture-independent approaches to understanding the gut microbiota
- Microbe-host signaling and bile degradation in the human GI tract
- Infectious pathogens
- The gut microbiome
- Bacteriocins (applied and fundamental aspects)
- Bacteriophage (applied and fundamental aspects)
- Probiotics as anti-infectives
- Host-microbe interactions
- Mucosal immune sampling and response in the gut and the lungs
- Bacteriophage-host interactions in lactic acid bacteria and other food-associated bacteria
- Bacteriophage-resistance systems
- Functional genomics of lactic acid bacteria
- Industrial microbiology
- Innate and adaptive immunity to herpesvirus infection
- Viral encoded regulation of host response pathways
- Manipulation of viral genomes to interrogate function
- Use of viral vectors for gene delivery
- Gastrointestinal viruses and disease: Norovirus; Rotavirus and Poliovirus
- Mucosal immunity: Peyer’s patches as antigen sampling sites in the gut
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection and the Cystic Fibrosis lung
- Yeast Biotechnology
- Microbial signalling
- Microbe-host interactions
- Fungal pathogenesis
- Environmental and Marine Biotechnology
- Microbial Genetics and Genomics
- Microbe-host Interactions Applied to Environment and Health Sectors
- Microbial Pathogenesis
- Molecular Biology of Plant-Microbe Interactions
- Molecular Microbial Ecology of Microbes
- Environmental Biotechnology
- Microbial Bioconversions for Resource Sustainability
- Waste/Wastewater bioremediation
- Global regulation of microbial pathways for pollutant catabolism
- Mechanisms of Immune Tolerance
- Allergy and Asthma
- Innate Immune Recognition of Bacterial Structures
- Genomics of host interaction mechanisms in gastrointestinal bacteria
- Composition and function of the human gut microbiota
- Bacterial genomics, especially Yersinia sp
- Bacterial Microcompartments
- Horizontal gene transfer in bacteria (phage mediated)
- Small molecule signalling in microbial communities
- Chemico-biological therapeutics
- (Post)Transcriptional regulatory systems
- Food Biotechnology
- Gut microbiota
- Novel antimicrobials, including bacteriocins and bacteriophage
- Probiotics and starter cultures
- Virus-host cell interactions: intracellular molecular communication between virus and cell components determining infection outcome.
- Viruses as vectors for therapeutic gene delivery.
- Gastrointestinal viruses and gut epithelial cells and the influence of probiotic bacteria on virus-epithelial cell interactions.
- Neurotropic viruses and cells of the central nervous system
- Ecology and evolution of the gut microbiome
- Prevalence, diversity and function of gut microbial eukarya (Fungi and Protists e.g. Blastocystis)
- Bacteriophages
- Host-parasite coevolution
- Chronic Disease
- Global gene regulation in bacteria through environmental sensing systems
- Molecular biology of bacteriophage infecting lactic acid bacteria
- Genomics and systems biology of lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria
- Metabolic engineering of lactic acid bacteria
- Probiotic functionality of bifidobacteria
- Evolutionary ecology of gut microbes
- Community ecology of host-associated microbiomes
- Human nutrition and the gut microbiome
- Translation of basic microbiome science into therapeutic and nutritional strategies