Staff profile

Dr Ciara Keating is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Engineering within the Department of Engineering at Durham University. She is a trained microbiologist (BSc from the National University of Ireland, Galway [NUIG - now the University of Galway]). From the outset, her interests were in environmental microbiology and how we can harness the power of microbial populations in biotechnology. She pursued a PhD at NUI Galway in research that combined engineering and microbiology. Here, she applied mixed microbial populations for biological waste remediation and bioenergy production in low-temperature conditions in work that was later taken to full-scale applications. In 2016, she joined the University of Glasgow (UoG) Water and Environment research group exploring novel anaerobic imaging, international collaborations on decentralised wastewater treatment systems, and bioinformatic approaches in microbiology. Recently, her focus has been on sustainable agriculture, having worked as a postdoc on the cross-disciplinary Des-Bl grant (‘Building a decision support tool for potato blackleg disease’ - led by Prof. Ian Toth; James Hutton Institute). You can read more about this research here Keating et al 2024. 

Her ambitions at Durham University are to use this expertise to develop more informed means to manipulate mixed microbial communities in biotechnology and agriculture. She is particularly interested in developing novel tools to advance our understanding of microbial interactions. 

Dr Keating is currently accepting PhD students and will consider undergraduates for studentship schemes (e.g. Microbiology Society, Microbiology International, and the British Society for Plant Pathology).

Journal Article

• Keating, C., Kilbride, E., Stalham, M., Nellist, C., Milner, J., Humphris, S., Toth, I., Mable, B. K., & Ijaz, U. Z. (online). Balancing the scales: Impact of irrigation and pathogen burden on potato blackleg disease and soil microbial communities. bioRxiv (Preprint Server for Biology), 2023-07
• Keating, C., Fiege, K., Diender, M., Sousa, D. Z., & Villanueva, L. (online). Microbial single-cell applications under anoxic conditions. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.01321-24
• Ameer, A., Saleem, F., Keating, C., Gundogdu, O., Ijaz, U. Z., & Javed, S. (2024). Dataset of 16S rRNA gene sequences of 111 healthy and Newcastle disease infected caecal samples from multiple chicken breeds of Pakistan. Data in Brief, 57, Article 110957. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.110957
• Keating, C., Kilbride, E., Stalham, M. A., Nellist, C., Milner, J., Humphris, S., Toth, I., Mable, B. K., & Ijaz, U. Z. (2024). Balancing the scales: assessing the impact of irrigation and pathogen burden on potato blackleg disease and soil microbial communities. Microbiome, 12(1), Article 210. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-024-01918-6
• Ijaz, U. Z., Ameer, A., Saleem, F., Gul, F., Keating, C., & Javed, S. (2024). Specialty grand challenge: how can we use integrative approaches to understand microbial community dynamics?. Frontiers in Systems Biology, 4, Article 1432791. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsysb.2024.1432791
• Ameer, A., Saleem, F., Keating, C., Gundogdu, O., Ijaz, U. Z., & Javed, S. (2024). Dataset of 130 metagenome-assembled genomes of healthy and diseased broiler chicken caeca from Pakistan. Data in Brief, 54, Article 110487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.110487
• Saleem, F., Ameer, A., Star-Shirko, B., Keating, C., Gundogdu, O., Ijaz, U. Z., & Javed, S. (2024). Dataset of 569 metagenome-assembled genomes from the caeca of multiple chicken breeds from commercial and backyard farming setups of Pakistan. Data in Brief, 54, Article 110552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.110552
• Gul, F., Herrema, H., Davids, M., Keating, C., Nasir, A., Ijaz, U. Z., & Javed, S. (2024). Gut microbial ecology and exposome of a healthy Pakistani cohort. Gut Pathogens, 16(1), Article 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13099-024-00596-x
• Singh, S., Keating, C., Ijaz, U. Z., & Hassard, F. (2023). Molecular insights informing factors affecting low temperature anaerobic applications: Diversity, collated core microbiomes and complexity stability relationships in LCFA-fed systems. Science of the Total Environment, 874, Article 162420
• Keating, C., Bolton-Warberg, M., Hinchcliffe, J., Davies, R., Whelan, S., Wan, A., Fitzgerald, R., Davies, S., Smith, C., & Ijaz, U. (2022). Drivers of ecological assembly in the hindgut of Atlantic Cod fed a macroalgal supplemented diet. npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, 8(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41522-022-00296-x
• Trego, A., Keating, C., Nzeteu, C., Graham, A., O’Flaherty, V., & Ijaz, U. Z. (2022). Beyond basic diversity estimates—Analytical tools for mechanistic interpretations of amplicon sequencing data. Microorganisms, 10(10), Article 1961. https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms10101961
• Ijaz, U. Z., Gundogdu, O., Keating, C., Eekert, M. V., Gibson, W., Parkhill, J., Abilahi, F., Liseki, B., Nguyen, V.-A., & Sudgen, S. (2022). Analysis of pit latrine microbiota reveals depth-related variation in composition, and key parameters and taxa associated with latrine fill-up rate. Frontiers in Microbiology, 13, Article 960747. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.960747
• Trego, A. C., Holohan, B. C., Keating, C., Graham, A., O'Connor, S., Gerardo, M., Hughes, D., Ijaz, U. Z., & O'Flaherty, V. (2021). First proof of concept for full-scale, direct, low-temperature anaerobic treatment of municipal wastewater. Bioresource Technology, 341, Article 125786
• Rashid, A., Mirza, S. A., Keating, C., Ali, S., & Campos, L. C. (2021). Hospital wastewater treated with a novel bacterial consortium (Alcaligenes faecalis and Bacillus paramycoides spp.) for phytotoxicity reduction in Berseem clover and tomato crops. Water Science and Technology, 83(7), 1764-1780. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2021.079
• Keating, C., Bolton-Warberg, M., Hinchcliffe, J., Davies, R., Whelan, S., Wan, A., Fitzgerald, R., Davies, S., Ijaz, U., & Smith, C. (2021). Temporal changes in the gut microbiota in farmed Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) outweigh the response to diet supplementation with macroalgae. Animal Microbiome, 3, 1-21
• Connelly, S., Pussayanavin, T., J. Randle-Boggis, R., Wicheansan, A., Jampathong, S., Keating, C., Z. Ijaz, U., T. Sloan, W., & Koottatep, T. (2019). Solar septic tank: next generation sequencing reveals effluent microbial community composition as a useful index of system performance. Water, 11(12), https://doi.org/10.3390/w11122660
• Keating, C., Hughes, D., Mahony, T., Cysneiros, D., Ijaz, U., Smith, C., & O'Flaherty, V. (2018). Cold adaptation and replicable microbial community development during long-term low-temperature anaerobic digestion treatment of synthetic sewage. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 94(7), https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiy095
• Tsagkari, E., Keating, C., Couto, J. M., & Sloan, W. T. (2017). A keystone methylobacterium strain in biofilm formation in drinking water. Water, 9(10), Article 778. https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100778
• Keating, C., Chin, J. P., Hughes, D., Manesiotis, P., Cysneiros, D., Mahony, T., Smith, C. J., McGrath, J. W., & O’Flaherty, V. (2016). Biological phosphorus removal during high-rate, low-temperature, anaerobic digestion of wastewater. Frontiers in Microbiology, 7, Article 226. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.00226
• Boura, M., Keating, C., Royet, K., Paudyal, R., O'Donoghue, B., O'Byrne, C. P., & Karatzas, K. A. (2016). Loss of SigB in Listeria monocytogenes strains EGD-e and 10403S confers hyperresistance to hydrogen peroxide in stationary phase under aerobic conditions. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 82(15), 4584-4591. https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.00709-16
• Keating, C., Cysneiros, D., Mahony, T., & O'Flaherty, V. (2013). The hydrolysis and biogas production of complex cellulosic substrates using three anaerobic biomass sources. Water Science and Technology, 67(2), 293-298. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2012.543