Kelley Gallagher earned her B.S. in Biological Sciences in 2009 from the University of Pittsburgh. She then moved to Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego where she earned her PhD in 2015. She conducted postdoctoral research in the Molecular Microbiology Department at the John Innes Centre and in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Montreal.
Research Focus
Our lab is very interested in the regulation of development and antibiotic production in bacteria. We primarily study the filamentous Gram-positive actinobacterial genus Streptomyces, which undergo a complex life cycle that culminates in the production of chains of exospores. Streptomyces and other sporulating Actinobacteria are our most important source of antibiotics and other natural products. The production of antibiotics is tightly coordinated with the complex life cycle of these bacteria, and therefore the ability to fully exploit antibiotic production by these species depends on a profound understanding of the global regulatory cascades controlling development. Our key goals are to understand how the process of sporulation is regulated in Streptomyces, examine how these regulatory pathways have evolved in the Phylum Actinobacteria, and to leverage this knowledge to manipulate antibiotic production.
Graduate Fields
Courses Taught
- BIOMI 4850/6850: Bacterial Genetics
Publications
Delaby M, Yang L, Jacq M, Gallagher KA, Kysela DT, Hughes V, Pulido F, Veyrier FJ, VanNieuwenhze MS, Brun YV. Phenotypic plasticity in cell elongation among closely related bacterial species. Nature Communications, 2025 16(1):5099.
Gallagher KA*, Tschowri N*, Brennan RG, Schumacher MA, Buttner MJ. How c-di-GMP controls progression through the Streptomyces life cycle. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 2024 80:102516.
Hendry TA and Gallagher KA. Cyclic-di-GMP promotes bacteria-host association. Nature Microbiology, 2023 8(10):1758-1759.
Bush MJ, Gallagher KA, Chandra G, Findlay KC, Schlimpert S. Hyphal compartmentalization and sporulation in Streptomyces require the conserved cell division protein SepX. Nature Communications, 2022 13:71.
Gallagher KA and Brun YV. Bacterial chromosome segregation: new insights into non-binary replication and division. Current Biology, 2021 31:R1044-R1046.
Schumacher MA*, Gallagher KA*, Holmes NA*, Chandra G, Henderson M, Kysela DT, Brennan RG, and Buttner MJ. Evolution of a σ–(c-di-GMP)–anti-σ switch. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021 118(30) e2105447118.
Gallagher KA*, Schumacher MA*, Bush MJ, Bibb MJ, Chandra G, Holmes NA, Zeng W, Henderson M, Zhang H, Findlay KC, Brennan RG, and Buttner MJ. c-di-GMP arms an anti-sigma to control progression of multicellular differentiation in Streptomyces. Molecular Cell, 2020 77:1-14.
Gallagher KA, Wanger G, Henderson J, Llorente M, Hughes CC, and Jensen PR. Ecological implications of hypoxia-triggered shifts in secondary metabolism. Environmental Microbiology, 2017 19(6):2182-2191.
Gallagher KA and Jensen PR. Genomic insights into the evolution of hybrid isoprenoid biosynthetic gene clusters in the MAR4 clade of marine streptomycetes. BMC Genomics, 2015 16:960.
Gallagher KA, Rauscher K, Ioca L and Jensen PR. Phylogenetic and chemical diversity of a hybrid isoprenoid-producing streptomycete lineage. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2013 22:6894-6902.
Gallagher KA, Fenical W, and Jensen PR. Hybrid isoprenoid secondary metabolite production in terrestrial and marine actinomycetes. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 2010 21:794-800.
