Francesco De Batté's Avatar

Francesco De Batté

@francescodb.bsky.social

Scientist doing a PhD in synthetic and evolutionary microbiology with Tiffany Taylor and Thomas Gorochowski. Also interested in developmental biology, plants, and science communication/education. I like to make in media incl. DNA and code. He/him

496 Followers  |  189 Following  |  73 Posts  |  Joined: 03.10.2023  |  2.3236

Latest posts by francescodb.bsky.social on Bluesky

Highly recommended👇

09.10.2025 17:44 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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🛠️New tool from the lab! #SHARK🦈: a new strain to support complex cloning of transient R6K expression plasmids – perfect for genome engineering. Work led by the talented Shivang Joshi and all strains and strain assembly tools enroute to Addgene. #synbio doi.org/10.1101/2025...

07.10.2025 08:31 — 👍 5    🔁 5    💬 1    📌 0
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Microbial stem cells support productivity in dedicated factory cells in an asymmetrically dividing E. coli system
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

06.10.2025 07:03 — 👍 7    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0

**Please Repost**

Pallavi Singh Lab is looking for two Postdocs to join our team studying how plants balance carbon, water, and resilience in a changing climate.

PlantPlug PDRA: vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

REVOLUTION PDRA: vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

Deadline: October 15.

04.10.2025 11:20 — 👍 33    🔁 46    💬 0    📌 0
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Genetic controllers for enhancing the evolutionary longevity of synthetic gene circuits in bacteria - Nature Communications Engineered gene circuits often degrade over time due to mutation and selection. Here the authors use a host-aware modelling framework to develop genetic controllers to sustain synthetic gene expression. They identify a range of design trade-offs in production, robustness and long-term performance.

Genetic controllers for enhancing the evolutionary longevity of synthetic gene circuits in bacteria
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

02.10.2025 07:12 — 👍 7    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 1
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Loved having a chance this weekend to showcase the science behind bioluminescence & talk about the bioluminescent bays of Puerto Rico at the Harvard Museum's Celebremos Puerto Rico 🕺🇵🇷!

30.09.2025 15:57 — 👍 2    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0
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London SynBio Network 10 London SynBio afterwork talks and networking event on Thursday 25th of September

🎉 London SynBio Network is back! Join us on 25th of September.

🧬 Surpassing Nature – Metabolic engineering for novel biological CO2 fixation routes
Ari Satanowski

💐 Open Flower: designer flowers for art and education
Nick Desnoyer

➡️ Register at: events.humanitix.com/london-synbi...

17.09.2025 14:28 — 👍 6    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0
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Marchantia berteroana at 3000 meters above the sea level. Vallecitos, Mendoza.

12.09.2025 23:34 — 👍 25    🔁 5    💬 0    📌 0

Synthetic promoters has relied on naturally occurring TFs or Cas9. With de novo designed DNA binding proteins, there are so much potential for synbio, whether it's targeting natural promoters or designing synthetic ones.

12.09.2025 12:01 — 👍 19    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
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Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities Abstract. Microbial communities are frequently organized into complex spatial structures, shaped by intrinsic cellular traits, interactions between communi

Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities url: academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...

10.09.2025 19:45 — 👍 57    🔁 15    💬 0    📌 3
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We are looking for a PDRA for the PlantPlug project, turning parasitic plants into programmable bio-modules! Using mistletoe as a novel chassis, we are exploring the frontiers of inter-species communication.
Apply online by 15/10/2025.
*RP*
#PlantSciencesJobs

vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

10.09.2025 18:01 — 👍 15    🔁 14    💬 0    📌 2
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Fluctuating DNA methylation tracks cancer evolution at clinical scale Nature - Cancer evolutionary dynamics are quantitatively inferred using a method, EVOFLUx, applied to fluctuating DNA methylation.

Cancer is an evolutionary disease, but does knowing a cancer’s evolutionary past help predict its future? Out today in @nature, we learnt the evolution of 2000 lymphoid cancers and found it was highly correlated with clinical outcomes! (1/7)
rdcu.be/eFrrc

10.09.2025 16:17 — 👍 46    🔁 19    💬 1    📌 2

SynBio UK London 2025. Submit your abstract and register before 12 September for earlybird discount.

04.09.2025 13:55 — 👍 3    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
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🚨I have a fully funded 4-year #PhD opportunity in my lab on 'Tuneable multi-input genetic logic circuits for designer probiotics'.🦠 We'll be throwing all the tech we have at this one to make reliable engineering of diverse microbes a reality. Applicants must be UK national...

03.09.2025 09:00 — 👍 3    🔁 4    💬 2    📌 0

Educational and entertaining video demonstrating a system for building interactive multi-neighbourhood cellular automata. Well worth a watch

01.09.2025 17:05 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Can a virus help uncover Turing patterns in nature? In this @commsbio.nature.com paper, researchers show how the tulip breaking virus triggers the expression of a pigment that can display a broad range of (observable) stripe patterns @philipcball.bsky.social
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

27.08.2025 22:25 — 👍 28    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0
Simulating Phase Change | Guest video by Vilas Winstein
YouTube video by 3Blue1Brown Simulating Phase Change | Guest video by Vilas Winstein

Guest video 3/5 while I'm on leave is now up! It's by a former SoME winner, covering key ideas in statistical mechanics to create a simple and discrete model mirroring the behavior of a fluid transitioning between a liquid and gaseous state. Enjoy!

youtu.be/itRV2jEtV8Q

28.08.2025 14:21 — 👍 83    🔁 10    💬 0    📌 0
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1 month of liverwort growth in 12 seconds.

The thallus of Marchantia polymorpha grows slow and steady, creeping over its substrate.

27.08.2025 16:26 — 👍 45    🔁 8    💬 2    📌 1

Engineering non-exponential proliferation in Escherichia coli using functionalized protein aggregates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.23.671898v1

24.08.2025 04:08 — 👍 7    🔁 6    💬 0    📌 0
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Friday Flower 001: Mimulus lewisii 🌸✨

Monkeyflowers are masterpieces of design with nectar-guide spots formed by an activator–inhibitor system of MYB transcription factors. These generate reaction–diffusion patterns across the ventral petal.

22.08.2025 15:51 — 👍 97    🔁 42    💬 5    📌 1
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a man in a suit standing in a greenhouse ALT: a man in a suit standing in a greenhouse

So I am absolutely going to host a Flower Design symposium in 2030. This is a formal call for designers. We have @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social with his beautiful Arabidopsis roses, and I'm likely giving my life to my Alice Petunia...but we need more people. Where you at?!

SHOW US YOUR BLOOM PLANS

22.08.2025 19:19 — 👍 35    🔁 11    💬 7    📌 1
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Are you a theoretical biologist that is intererested in the ecology and evolution of metabolic interactions among microorganisms?

Do you like to cooperate with experimentalists?

Do you have a PhD and experience in modelling and statistics?

Then this position might be for you👇:

shorturl.at/iiiOv

22.08.2025 08:25 — 👍 15    🔁 12    💬 1    📌 1

Have you signed up to speak at our seminar series the upcoming academic year? Sign up is open till end of the month. Share among your networks for this amazing opportunity to showcase your research 📝📩

22.08.2025 09:38 — 👍 1    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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Frequency-dependent fitness effects are ubiquitous In simple microbial populations, the fitness effects of most selected mutations are generally taken to be constant, independent of genotype frequency. This assumption underpins predictions about evolutionary dynamics, epistatic interactions, and the maintenance of genetic diversity in populations. Here, we systematically test this assumption using beneficial mutations from early generations of the Escherichia coli Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE). Using flow cytometry-based competition assays, we find that frequency-dependent fitness effects are the norm rather than the exception, occurring in approximately 80\% of strain pairs tested. Most competitions exhibit negative frequency-dependence, where fitness advantages decline as mutant frequency increases. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the strength of frequency-dependence is predictable from invasion fitness measurements, with invasion fitness explaining approximately half of the biological variation in frequency-dependent slopes. Additionally, we observe violations of fitness transitivity in several strain combinations, indicating that competitive relationships cannot always be predicted from fitness relative to a single reference strain alone. Through high-resolution measurements of within-growth cycle dynamics, we show that simple resource competition explains a substantial portion of the frequency-dependence: when faster-growing genotypes dominate populations, they deplete shared resources more rapidly, reducing the time available for fitness differences to accumulate. Our results demonstrate that even in a simple model system designed to minimize ecological complexity, subtle ecological interactions between closely related genotypes create frequency-dependent selection that can fundamentally alter evolutionary dynamics. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

How common are frequency dependent fitness effects?

New preprint out today 👇
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

21.08.2025 19:23 — 👍 78    🔁 35    💬 5    📌 0
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STEPS To It Announcing a new program, called STEPS, to simulate the dynamics of evolving microbial populations.

Excited to share new #program, STEPS, which can simulate #dynamics of the E. coli Long-Term Evolution Experiment (#LTEE) or other microbes in serial transfer regime.

telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/s...

STEPS developed by @devinmlake.bsky.social, Zachary Matson, Minako Izutsu, and me.

12.08.2025 15:53 — 👍 158    🔁 60    💬 4    📌 5
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Protecting Honey Bees through Microbiome Engineering
doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

08.08.2025 15:36 — 👍 6    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

Switches

01.08.2025 12:15 — 👍 5    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

My thesis is now available 🥳

28.07.2025 19:02 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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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

16.07.2025 15:11 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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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

11.07.2025 18:52 — 👍 3    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

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