Research Interests:

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.

Areas of research focus include:

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

Teaching

Current Teaching

Module Code	Module Title
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

Supervise students and/or dissertation marking from the following courses

Module Code	Course Title
BIO3308	4th Honors Project
BIO4301	MSci Research Project
BBC8003	MSc Molecular Biology & Biotechnology Research Project
BIO3302	FQN Honours Project Module

Past Teaching at Medical University of South Carolina, SC

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

Guest Lecturer at Medical University of South Carolina, SC

Departments
Pathology, Pediatrics, Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy & Sleep Medicine, and Public Health Sciences

Past Teaching at University of California San Diego/San Diego State University, CA

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

Meet the Team

The Hardiman Lab is based in the School of Biological Sciences and the Institute for Global food Security at Queen’s University Belfast

Principal Investigator

Prof Gary Hardiman

Researchers

Adam Harris

Running, cycling, rowing, All things data and computers

Alix McDaid

Surfing, skating, playing piano, Microplastics

Christina Biamis

Travelling, Science, Art and Food, Microplastics

Dr Willian Abraham da Silveira PhD

Travelling, Reading, Martial Arts, History, Philosophy, Multi-omics, Ageing and space travel

Hao Wang

Travelling, Running, Playing the flute, Metabolic diseases, miRNAs and lncRNAs

James Mackle

IOT, Woodwork, Guitar, Piano, Addiction, Multi-omics, Machine Learning

Rebecca Morgan

Animal welfare, Classical Piano, Prostate cancer, lncRNAs, Vitamin D, Fusion genes

Thomas Cahill

Keeping active, Science, Irish language culture and history, Current affairs, Travelling, Torpor, Mental health, Cancer research

Students

Conor Porter

Reading, Guitar, Spending time with my friends and family, Smoltification of Atlantic salmon

Heather Greig

Live music, Travelling, Cooking, Walking my dogs, Learning Irish, Hibernation and Space Flight

Richard Hillis

Swimming, Baking, Guitar, Painting, Drawing, Art, Travelling, Languages, Reading, Sci-fi, Hibernation and Space Flight

Ryan Millar

Sport, Travelling, Scuba Diving, Reading, Cancer Biology

Lab Alumni:

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

Partners and Collaborators

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).

Funding

Current and Recent Research Funding

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

Featured Publications

Dylan J. Richards, Yang Li, Charles M. Kerr, Jenny Yao, Gyda C. Beeson, Robert C. Coyle, Xun Chen, Jia Jia, Brooke Damon, Robert Wilson, E. Starr Hazard, Gary Hardiman, Donald R. Menick, Craig C. Beeson, Hai Yao, Tong Ye & Ying Mei

April, 2020 In Nature Biomedical Engineering

Human cardiac organoids for the modelling of myocardial infarction and drug cardiotoxicity

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…

DOI

T. Cahill, G. Hardiman

February, 2020 In Nutrition Bulletin

Nutritional challenges and countermeasures for space travel

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…

DOI

Willian Abraham da Silveira, Esteban Vazquez-Hidalgo, Elesha Bartolotta, Ludivine Renaud, Paul Paolini, Gary Hardiman

November, 2019 In Pharmacogenomics

The effects of rosiglitazone on the neonatal rat cardiomyocyte transcriptome: a temporal analysis

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…

PDF DOI

Bethany J. Wolf, Diane L. Kamen, Patricia Fair, Gary Hardiman

July, 2019 In International Journal of Advances in Science Engineering and Technology

Meta-analysis Of Dolphin And Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Reveals Inflammatory Signatures Associated With Exposure To High Levels Of Perfluoroalkyl Substances

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…

PDF

Willian A da Silveira, Ludivine Renaud, Jonathan Simpson, William B Glen Jr, Edward S Hazard, Dongjun Chung, Gary Hardiman

September, 2018 In * Genes (Basel)*

miRmapper: A Tool for Interpretation of miRNA⁻mRNA Interaction Networks

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…

PDF DOI

Matthew Huff, Willian A. da Silveira, Oliana Carnevali, Ludivine Renaud, Gary Hardiman

February, 2018 In Nature Scientific Reports

Systems Analysis of the Liver Transcriptome in Adult Male Zebrafish Exposed to the Plasticizer (2-Ethylhexyl) Phthalate (DEHP)

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…

DOI

Presentations

Microplastics

Christina Biamis - Microplastic-derived Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals on Seabird Epigenetics Video Presentation

Alix McDaid - Investigating the emerging issue of microplastics and their impact on terrestrial ecosystems

Torpor

Thomas Cahill - Utilization of an induced torpor-like state as a countermeasure for low dose radiation exposure in a zebrafish model

Software

miRmapper

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.