The laboratory works in the field of systems biology the objective of which is the study of biological systems, including genes, RNAs, proteins, metabolites and cells in a focused manner, and organs, organisms and populations in a broader context.
Studying the effects of man-made contaminants (e.g. microplastics, persistent organic pollutants, xenobiotics) on marine and human health
Studying prostate cancer in the context of racial differences and nutritional deficiency
Examining the impacts of long term space travel – specifically the effects of nutrition, torpor, space radiation and microgravity on hepatic and intestinal biology
Developing a rat model of opioid abuse to better understand the biological basis for substance abuse disorders and advance development of preventive strategies and more efficacious treatments
Developing a robust toolkit for better integration of Omics data sets into genotype-phenotype predictions.
Studying the role of noncoding RNAs in the development of cancer and metabolic diseases
Module Code | Module Title |
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BIO2302 | Food Choice, Diet and Health |
BIO3301 | Food Supply Safety Chain & Security |
BIO4102 & ALU8002 | Advanced Food Bioanalysis |
BIO2305 | Molecular Genetics and Bioinformatics |
SCM8152 | Systems Medicine: From Molecules to Populations |
Module Code | Course Title |
---|---|
BIO3308 | 4th Honors Project |
BIO4301 | MSci Research Project |
BBC8003 | MSc Molecular Biology & Biotechnology Research Project |
BIO3302 | FQN Honours Project Module |
Role | Faculty | Module Code | Module Title |
---|---|---|---|
Faculty | College of Graduate Studies | CGS 727 | Designing Rigorous Research; Principles in Rigor, Transparency and Reproducibility |
Faculty | College of Graduate Studies | CGS 780 | Human Genetics & Genomics |
Departments |
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Pathology, Pediatrics, Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy & Sleep Medicine, and Public Health Sciences |
Role | Module Code | Module Title |
---|---|---|
Course Co-Director | FPM237 | Microarray Genomics Technology and Informatics |
Lecturer | MED260 | Modern Techniques of Biomedical Research |
Course Director | BIOL-40050 | From Gene to Function |
Course Director | BIOL-40127 | Microarray Technologies |
Lecturer | BIOM-200B | From the Molecule to the Organism |
Lecturer | BIOM-252 | Human Genetics and Genomics |
Name | Role | Year |
---|---|---|
Madison Brown | MSc Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics | 2020 |
Jacopo Umberto Verga | MSc Molecular and Applied Biology (Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy) ERASMUS Programme | 2020 |
Dulcie Keeley | BSc Biological Sciences | 2020 |
Diarmuid Owens | BSc Biological Sciences | 2020 |
Keir Herink | BSc Biological Sciences | 2020 |
Amirah Mohamud | MSc Molecular Biology & Biotechnology | 2019 |
Zehao Chen | MSc Molecular Biology & Biotechnology | 2019 |
I maintain active research collaborations with groups in the USA (University of California, Medical University of South Carolina, Wake Forest School of Medicine), (Université de Camerino & Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy), National University of Ireland Galway (Ireland), University of Aberdeen (Scotland) and Swansea University (Wales).
Title | Role | Funder |
---|---|---|
Development of a biopsychosocial translational research programme in post-traumatic stress disorder | co-I | UKRI/ESRC |
Actions of endocrine disrupting chemicals in seabirds | Supervisor | UKRI/NERC |
The Genetic Basis of Opioid Dependence Vulnerablility in a Rodent Model | MPI | US NIH/NIDA |
Medical University of South Carolina Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center in Precision Medicine and Minority Men’s Health | Subcontract PI | NIH/NIMHD |
Effect of Induced Hibernation and Prolonged Radiation Exposure on the Zebrafish Gut Epigenome | PI | NASA/SC-EPSCoR USA |
Statistical Methods for Genetic Studies, Using Network and Integrative Analysis | Co-I | US NIH/NIGMS |
A Novel Multiscale Data Integration Framework for Omics Big Data Modeling (in the Genomes to Phenomes framework) | PI | NSF/SC-EPSCOR Pilot |
Algorithms for Literature-Guided Multi-Platform Identification of Cancer Subtypes | Co-I | US NIH/NCI |
Environmental factors are the largest contributors to cardiovascular disease. Here we show that cardiac organoids that incor- porate an oxygen-diffusion gradient and that are stimulated with the neurotransmitter noradrenaline model the structure of the human heart after myocardial infarction (by mimicking the infarcted, border and remote zones), and recapitulate hallmarks of…
There has been a reinvigoration of public interest in space exploration in what has been deemed the new space race, which aims to eventually take humans to Mars in the 2030s. This type of Earth‐independent deep space mission presents a multitude of challenges for…
The objective was to determine via high-throughput RNA sequencing the temporal effects of rosiglitazone (Avandia®) on the neonatal rat ventricular myocyte transcriptome. Materials & methods: Neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVMs) were exposed to rosiglitazone in vitro. Meta analyses utilized temporal comparisons of 0.5 h control versus 0.5 h treatment, 0.5 h treatment versus…
Currently a fundamental gap exists on how persistent organic pollutants affect humans especially those who consume high levels of seafood from contaminated coastal waters. There is an urgent need to better understand effects of these contaminants on human health in coastal communities. Elevated contaminant levels in coastal seafood will give rise to…
It is estimated that 30% of all genes in the mammalian cells are regulated by microRNA (miRNAs). The most relevant miRNAs in a cellular context are not necessarily those with the greatest change in expression levels between healthy and diseased tissue. Differentially expressed (DE) miRNAs that modulate a large number of messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts ultimately have a greater…
The organic compound diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) represents a high production volume chemical found in cosmetics, personal care products, laundry detergents, and household items. DEHP, along with other phthalates causes endocrine disruption in males. Exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals has been linked to the development of several adverse health outcomes with apical end points including Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). This…
miRmapper is an R package for analyzing the predicted impact that micro RNAs have on the post transcriptional regulation of mRNAs. The user will provide the list of miRNAs of interest and the predicted target genes for each, as well as a list of the differentially expressed genes from the sequencing experiment. miRmapper will generate metrics and plots of the interactions.
PIMENTo is an R package to normalize, analyze, and visualize microarray data
Sean M Courtney et al. - MUSC Bioinformatics Core (MBC)
Thomas Nash et al. - Pipeline for Integrated Microarray Expression Normalization Toolkit (PIMENTo)
Ludivine Renaud et al. - Does Exposure to BPA Change the Epigenome of Zebrafish?