Francesco De Batté

Switches

My thesis is now available 🥳

Do you know an academic who likes coffee and goes to conferences? If so, I've got the perfect sticker for this unique individual!

www.pinkpetri.etsy.com

Engineering yeast multicellular behaviors via synthetic adhesion and contact signaling By designing synthetic toolkits for contact-based signaling (MARS) and cell-cell adhesion (SATURN), we program yeast to form multicellular structures and perform complex tasks, like building logic circuits or sensing protein interactions via JUPITER.

Now online! Engineering yeast multicellular behaviors via synthetic adhesion and contact signaling

Very proud to have won the Faculty of Science Excellence in Doctoral Supervision Prize. Biggest thanks goes to my nominator @francescodb.bsky.social and the awesome letters of support from current and past group members that brought a tear to my eye. It's shared with every member Taylor lab member.

What to agument your favourite protein with new functionalities? 🛠️ We've got a #biodesign workflow to help with that! In work led by @georgiehs.bsky.social we present SIMPLIFE that blends biophyscial and #ML models to extend biology in useful ways. #synbio doi.org/10.1101/2025...

PCR Primer Design | Notion Prerequisite Protocols

Here's a tutorial I wrote on how I design detection and cloning primers using Primer3. Hopefully it's helpful for students. 💚

binomicalabs.notion.site/PCR-Primer-D...

Our work on re-engineering soybean floral traits to attract bee pollinators is up on BioRxiv! Shout-out to first author, Dr. Nicole Szeluga, who led this project and the tremendous team of scientists at the Danforth Center, UC-Davis, and the JIC, who made the project possible + funders: FFAR & USB

Student-led experimental evolution reveals novel biofilm regulatory networks underlying adaptations to multiple niches https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.06.658356v1

“People say DIY biology. I want DIT, do-it-together biology.”

Great article. Particularly liked this quote in the footnotes

This is still open for another week or so! Please apply :)

What I love most about being human is the rapid left field connections your brain makes when interfacing with new tools. With enough general experience one can get quite creative.

Experience is All You Need.

We should focus giving kids as much experience as possible to train their plasticity.

Drosophila Genetic Database The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

Fast phages outcompete by depleting host resources In nature, phages frequently coinfect bacteria, leading to inter-species competition. Furthermore, phage therapy often involves using a cocktail of different species to circumvent bacterial resistance...

Fast phages outcompete by depleting host resources

@cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social Spotlight by @josie-e.bsky.social and @annechevallereau.bsky.social on Bürke et al 2025 #ISMEJournal publication

www.cell.com/trends/micro...

🚨 theory/math devbio preprint alert!!! 🚨

Led by my v. talented PhD student, Daniel Muzatko, we’ve found some rather general and intriguing constraints on reaction-diffusion systems that allow them to self-organize developmental patterns:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The ambitious aim of the Synthetic Plants programme is to develop artificial chromosomes and chloroplasts that can survive in a living plant. If the teams achieve this, it will be one the most significant advances in plant synthetic biology.

tinyurl.com/ys3w6v2x

Powerful article about a beautifully constructed project from @bethmorillo-hall.bsky.social, @taylorlabgroup.bsky.social et al. Excited to see this in action! 🧫👩🏻‍🔬

Super excited to release a huge evolution project on the works for many years:

Evolution experiments synchronized across climates to understand rapid adaptation

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
All data available: www.grene-net.org/data

#MOILAB
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org

🧵👇

Nature Computes Better: ARIA opportunity seed Creators Kirsty, Manu and David Nature Computes Better opportunity seed Creators Kirsty Wan, Manu Prakash and David Jordan speak at the ARIA Summit. Captions are automatically generated.

Had a lot of fun sharing our research obsessions with @prakashlab.bsky.social and @livingphysics.org at @aria-research.bsky.social 's first ever Summit recently!

Curious about Suraj Bramhavar's Nature Computes Better opportunity space? You can now watch our segment back... 😏
vimeo.com/1087951924

YouTube video by ren's slice of life Running around the lab in 360° | A week of a plant science student

Check out amazing MPhil plant science student @karenuchida.bsky.social and here lab week in 360° @slcuplants.bsky.social @cam.ac.uk

youtu.be/l9-m_JlG6cE?...

Donate to Help Team BMI protect global food security at iGEM!, organized by iGEM BMI All stories start somewhere, and ours starts with Ahmed. Ahmed is … iGEM BMI needs your support for Help Team BMI protect global food security at iGEM!

This wonderful team from Pakistan is raising to get to the iGEM Jamboree and only have a few days left. They are 75% of the way to their goal. Please share, and if you have the means please donate. Every penny counts!

www.gofundme.com/f/help-team-...

Modeling predicts that metabolic diversity increases the ecological impacts of weapon gene transfer. Modeling scenarios for each column are shown across the top row. Bottom row: Example dynamics of the strains (attacker, target, transconjugant) during a contest using parameters that correspond to the cross (X) shown in the parameter sweeps directly below.

#Bacteria use weapons to outcompete rivals, but what happens if they're transferred? @prokaryota.bsky.social @jdpal.bsky.social &co show that HGT of toxin #plasmids is rare but recipients can thrive under relaxed nutrient competition, reshaping bacterial warfare @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43vC3X7

Register here: forms.gle/MC37w6yCib8C...
These are the people teaching the SynBio4ALL Africa Plant Synthetic Biology Course.

Different backgrounds. Shared goal.

Starts May 28. Free and online.

Amazing talk by @burtonlab.bsky.social! 3D printed acoustic levitators for studying airborne bacteria, and an investigation into the electrostatic attraction that helps parasitic nematodes jump onto their insect hosts. Interdisciplinary science is so cool

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHvu...

This is an exciting project with capacity to do some really game changing science.
Plus: I cannot recommend working with Colleen highly enough.

We are hiring for a funded PhD in design of cross- and multi-species genetic circuits. #PhD #synbio #crossspecies #multispecies #biocomputing #circuits #pathways @inrae-france.bsky.social @parissaclay.bsky.social

Details here: www.cellularcomputing.team/joinus/

🧩 PhD Position – Origins of Darwinian Inheritance 🧩

This joint PhD project between the @rug.nl (Rampal Etienne & Martijn Egas) and @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social (Bram van Dijk) explores how simple prebiotic systems could evolve reliable information transfer.

Apply here: shorturl.at/WgYMF

Wow

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A cellular entity retaining only its replicative core: Hidden archaeal lineage with an ultra-reduced genome

I got hit by some rather sudden and extreme financial hardship so if anyone is in need of remote wetlab contract research, strictly BSL1, do let me know. Currently scrambling for gigs.

Plant, Bacterial, Archaeal Non-model Bioeng
Custom Lab Hardware
Turn Key Genetic Design

Please repost for reach 💚