Marcelo is currently a BBSRC Discovery Fellow at the Department of Molecular Microbiology.
After finishing his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR – Brazil) and having worked as a visiting researcher at the John Innes Centre (2013-2014), Marcelo re-joined the John Innes Centre in 2016 as a Postdoctoral Researcher. During this period, Marcelo integrated a network of UK and Brazilian researchers working together to develop innovative technologies to increase crop productivity using nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
Capitalising on his postdoctoral findings and growing leadership in biological nitrogen fixation, in 2021, Marcelo was awarded a BBSRC Discovery Fellowship. In his project, Marcelo will work towards a solution to reduce the impact of agriculture on climate change and to make nitrogen fertiliser more accessible to smallholder farmers in developing countries.
Using the state-of-the-art facilities at John Innes Centre he aims to use innovative approaches spanning different areas of biology to find more sustainable ways to fertilise cereal crops. He aims to do that by understanding the intricacies of the association between free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria that can naturally colonise cereal crops.
Selected Publications
-
Bueno Batista M,Brett P,Appia-Ayme M,Wang YP,Dixon R (2021)Disrupting hierarchical control of nitrogen fixation enables carbon-dependent regulation of ammonia excretion in soil diazotrophsPlos GeneticsPublisher's version: N/C
-
Batista M. B., Dixon R. (2019)Manipulating nitrogen regulation in diazotrophic bacteria for agronomic benefit.Biochemical Society Transactions (47(2))Publisher's version: 0300-5127
-
Batista M. B., Chandra G., Monteiro R. A., de Souza E. M., Dixon R. (2018)Hierarchical interactions between Fnr orthologs allows fine-tuning of transcription in response to oxygen in Herbaspirillum seropedicaeNucleic Acids Research (46 (8))Publisher's version: 1362-4962