Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
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seamusholden.bsky.social
Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
@seamusholden.bsky.social
Professor of Microbial Biophysics, University of Warwick. Interested in all things bacterial cell envelope, cell biophysics and advanced light microscopy. https://holdenlab.github.io/ Twitter (inactive): @seamus_holden
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
🎉 Congratulations to Oluwatosin Orababa @tosinorababa.bsky.social, one of the winners of our 2025 Infection Science Award! 🦠👏
Get to know them in our new interview: microb.io/3XFyCui

#InfectionScience #Microbiology #ResearchSpotlight
November 25, 2025 at 12:31 PM
New release of the TrackMate single particle tracking plugin for ImageJ by @jytinevez.bsky.social looks amazing! forum.image.sc/t/trackmate-...
Loads of new features, most excitingly to me deep learning segmentation algorithms including Omnipose (for cells), and Spotiflow (for spots) #bioimaging
TrackMate v8 - segmentation editor and Python CLI integration
TrackMate v8: 2D Segmentation Editor & Python CLI Integration Hi everyone, I am excited to announce TrackMate v8, a major update introducing key improvements for both end-users and developers. Mai...
forum.image.sc
November 24, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
Apply now to attend the next EMBO Bacterial Networks meeting #EMBOBacNet

🗓️13-18 September 2026
📍Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain

📝Program and registration info: meetings.embo.org/event/26-bac...

👩‍🔬Organised with co-chair @s-lab.bsky.social and ECR @coralietesseur.bsky.social

#MicroSky
November 20, 2025 at 10:16 AM
I've made a short blog post summarising currently available substitutes to GeneFrames for bacterial timelapse microscopy.

I will keep it updated with any future developments, so let me know if anything should be added.

holdenlab.github.io/blog/2025/Ge...

#microsky
Alternatives to GeneFrames for bacterial timelapse microscopy | HOLDEN LAB @ WARWICK
Summary of efforts to find alternatives to GeneFrames
holdenlab.github.io
November 19, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
Are you looking for female speakers in CryoEM for seminars and conferences? Are you a woman in CryoEM and not yet on the ‚woman in CryoEM‘ list? Find your speakers and add/update name and affiliation! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
November 18, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
Ten days left to apply to be a @crick.ac.uk Early Career Group Leader

Closing date 27th November

www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...
November 17, 2025 at 11:55 AM
Another update on the GeneFrame saga 🙄 #microsky #bioimaging
Further update - while looking for alternatives I found this new page on GraceBio's website gracebio.com/product/secu...
So it looks like they may have indeed recently started making them but just dont reply to my emails any more 😠😠
Not cheap ($115/25pk) but good to have a source.
SecureSeal™ Frame - Grace Bio-Labs
SecureSeal™ Frame Only, 65ul, 15 X 16mm ID, 25 X 25mm OD, (Coverslips 620100, sold separately) - 25 PACK
gracebio.com
November 14, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Broader #bioimaging and #microsky people - anyone have any suggestions for sources of ~0.25mm non-cytotoxic double sided adhesive sheets?
Alternatively, a DIY solution might be possible. If anyone has any ideas on a suitable non-toxic double-sided adhesive sheet material, then purchasing those and using either consumer grade die-cutter or online-die cutting services could be a straightforward solution.
November 14, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Negative update on the GeneFrames saga: I got ghosted by GraceBio, who had said they were working on replacement. Back to square one. A few ideas how to move forward. Input appreciated. #microsky #bioimaging
Further update on GeneFrames replacements from GraceBio. Recap: their prototypes worked great, and in July they said they were moving to production. I emailed GraceBio beginning of October requesting update about production. Since then I have emailed them 4 times, and have not received any reply. 🔬🦠
November 14, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
The diderm cell envelope is not a stack of layers but a unified scaffold of Inner Membrane–Peptidoglycan–Outer Membrane.
We discuss how tethering the OM to the PG in E. coli preserves integrity — and extend the concept across diderm bacteria.
Curr Opin Microbiol: doi.org/10.1016/j.mi...
#microsky 🔬
Redirecting
doi.org
November 13, 2025 at 12:17 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
We’re on the cover of @embojournal.org
Odin, from Norse mythology, emerges from the Odinarchaeota yellowstonii genome, holding FtsZ1 and FtsZ2 the ancestral twins of tubulin highlighting their evolutionary divergence in Asgard archaea. 👉 shorturl.at/n7iZE
#archaea #evolution #tubulin #cytoskeleton
November 4, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
🚀🔬 Announcing #IMS2026 at @itqbnova.bsky.social! We're assembling a #LifeSciences #Microscopy symposium packed with ✨ speakers and 🧑‍🔬 workshops. All about imaging cells with photons, electrons and AI! If you love microscopy, you need to be here. Join us on March 19!
ims2026.itqbnovacommunity.org
October 21, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Letting AI anywhere near my writing is a big line in the sand for me. No thank you.
Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com
October 15, 2025 at 8:25 AM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
C̳H̳E̳C̳K̳ ̳I̳T̳ ̳O̳U̳T̳

Spectacular atomic force microscopy time course studies from Carolina Borrelli et al. in Nature Microbiology show how polymyxin drugs (like colistin) cause blebbing and shedding of the Gram-negative bacterial outer membrane

It looks almost like the bacilli 🦠 caught smallpox then died
Polymyxin B lethality requires energy-dependent outer membrane disruption - Nature Microbiology
The antibiotic polymyxin B requires bacterial metabolic activity to cause sufficient damage to the outer membrane to access the inner membrane, which it permeabilizes via an energy-independent mechanism to kill the cell.
www.nature.com
October 7, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
Thrilled to share that our article in @jofmicroscopy.bsky.social is now accessible online and as open access! If you wonder how to start the analysis of your images, we propose a decision tree to help identify suitable methods. Just follow the link(s)...

#imageanalysis #bioimaging
"From cells to pixels: A decision tree for designing bioimage analysis pipelines" by Elnaz Fazeli, Robert Haase, Michael Doube, Kota Miura & David Legland is free-to-view here: doi.org/10.1111/jmi....
September 29, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
October 4, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
BindCraft: an AlphaFold2-powered de novo protein binder design tool 🧬✨
Tested in some bacterial systems too! Designs so far are short peptides or mini-domains. Looking forward to long/full protein design ahead! 🧪 #microsky
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
One-shot design of functional protein binders with BindCraft - Nature
BindCraft, an open-source, automated pipeline for de novo protein binder design with experimental success rates of 10–100%, leverages AlphaFold2 weights to generate binders with nanomolar affinity without the need for high-throughput screening.
www.nature.com
October 5, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
And the crispri genetic interaction screen 👏💫🤯 #microsky from J-W Veening lab. Dual CRISPRi-seq for genome-wide genetic interaction studies identifies key genes involved in the pneumococcal cell cycle: Cell Systems www.cell.com/cell-systems...
Dual CRISPRi-seq for genome-wide genetic interaction studies identifies key genes involved in the pneumococcal cell cycle
Dénéréaz et al. introduce dual CRISPRi-seq, a broadly applicable method to chart gene-gene interactions across whole genomes. Applying it to the pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae, they uncovered over ...
www.cell.com
October 5, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria
Gene redundancy complicates systematic characterization of gene function as single-gene deletions may not produce discernible phenotypes. We report dual transposon sequencing (dual Tn-seq), a platform...
www.science.org
September 25, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Really enjoying reading this primer on single particle tracking #microscopy by @svanteeffelen.bsky.social and colleagues www.nature.com/articles/s43... (pdf on Sven's website)
A guide to single-particle tracking - Nature Reviews Methods Primers
Single-particle tracking is a method for analysing different motion behaviours of individual proteins and protein complexes in live cells. This Primer outlines the experimental setup and labelling tec...
www.nature.com
September 11, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
#MicroSky yeah, cable bacteria 🤗
End-to-end contact enables long-distance electron transport between filaments in cable bacteria academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #jcampubs
September 2, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
Exciting to see our protein binder design pipeline BindCraft published in its final form in @Nature ! This has been an amazing collaborative effort with Lennart, Christian, @sokrypton.org, Bruno and many other amazing lab members and collaborators.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
August 27, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Séamus Holden 🔬🦠🧫
The sun cast incredible crespuscular rays during last night's saffron hued sunset.

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
July 22, 2025 at 11:00 AM