Academic Staff Research Interests and Expertise

John Atkins

• 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. 

Marcus Claesson

• Bioinformatics
• Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics
• Culture-independent approaches to understanding Inflammatory Bowel Disease

David Clarke

• Bacteria-host interactions
• Biofilm formation
• Signaling in bacteria

Alan Dobson

• 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.

Gerald Fitzgerald

• 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

Cormac Gahan

• 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

Colin Hill

• Infectious pathogens
• The gut microbiome
• Bacteriocins (applied and fundamental aspects)
• Bacteriophage (applied and fundamental aspects)
• Probiotics as anti-infectives

John MacSharry

• Host-microbe interactions
• Mucosal immune sampling and response in the gut and the lungs

Jennifer Mahony

• Bacteriophage-host interactions in lactic acid bacteria and other food-associated bacteria
• Bacteriophage-resistance systems
• Functional genomics of lactic acid bacteria
• Industrial microbiology

Brian McSharry 

• 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

John Morgan

• 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

John Morrissey

• Yeast Biotechnology
• Microbial signalling
• Microbe-host interactions
• Fungal pathogenesis
• Environmental and Marine Biotechnology

Fergal O’Gara

• 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

 Niall O'Leary

• Environmental Biotechnology 
• Microbial Bioconversions for Resource Sustainability
• Waste/Wastewater bioremediation
• Global regulation of microbial pathways for pollutant catabolism

Liam O'Mahony

• Mechanisms of Immune Tolerance
• Allergy and Asthma
• Innate Immune Recognition of Bacterial Structures

Paul O’Toole

• Genomics of host interaction mechanisms in gastrointestinal bacteria
• Composition and function of the human gut microbiota

Mike Prentice

• Bacterial genomics, especially Yersinia sp
• Bacterial Microcompartments
• Horizontal gene transfer in bacteria (phage mediated)

F. Jerry Reen

• Small molecule signalling in microbial communities
• Chemico-biological therapeutics
• (Post)Transcriptional regulatory systems

 Paul Ross

• Food Biotechnology 
• Gut microbiota
• Novel antimicrobials, including bacteriocins and bacteriophage
• Probiotics and starter cultures

Martina Scallan

• 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

Pauline Scanlan

• 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

Douwe van Sinderen

• 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

Jens Walter

• 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