1) The Herzik lab is excited to announce our newest preprint in collaboration with the Grotjahn lab! We have developed a surfactant cocktail that seeks to overcome one of the more nefarious problems in #cryoEM, Air-water interface (AWI)-induced damage and preferred orientation (PO).

I may also have a withered self portrait in my attic 😄

Optimizing spatial organization of FtsZ rings for large-scale constriction in synthetic cells - Nature Communications Spatially regulated membrane constriction is an important milestone in reconstituting minimal cell division. Here the authors engineer a truncated system where the cytosolic domain of FtsN forms large...

Neat paper from Schwille lab. They demonstrate constriction of synthetic vesicles using important components of the bacterial cell division machinery, FtsZ and FtsN. They induce strong constriction of Z-rings in vesicles just by adding the cytoplasmic domain of FtsN www.nature.com/articles/s41...

3D-MINSTED nanoscopy and protein tracking in densely labelled living cells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

Come work with us in Oxford!

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQL601/p...

There's still time to apply for this PhD position!

Four graphs, showing the response of PA14 and an isogenic pel mutant, and PAO1 and an isogenic pel psl double mutant, to meropenem and colistin. There is no difference between the response of mutants and WTs.

During her PhD, Jenny found something unexpected: biofilm-deficient P. aeruginosa mutants were just as tolerant to antibiotics as the WT when grown in our cystic fibrosis lung model. But why? #MicroSky 1/n

This is a nice one! Congratulations @carballido-lab.bsky.social et al! Nice to see you agree that this might lead to local enrichment of cell wall precursor lipids. Not easy to prove but I still think its an attractive model (to ensure high CW synthesis given low lipid II levels).

The demand for #ProkaryoticCellBio so far has been crazy! We received a record number of abstract & grant submissions, to which the conference chairs are busy reviewing! We predict poster slots & accommodation to begin filling up, don't wait until the deadline to register! More info ➡️ bit.ly/4raYCu

I should qualify this statement. They saw that Gram+ cell wall is largely impermeable to mNeonGreen. But permeable to smaller molecules (ubiquitin and phospholipase). They did not yet test molecule sizes larger than mNeonGreen.

Preprint on the permeability of Gram+ bacterial cell wall from a few months ago. Intriguing findings, elegant methodology. Cell wall is largely impermeable to molecule sizes of mNeonGreen (27kDa) and above. How do larger secreted proteins get through? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microsky

Bacteriocin biophysics: From protein-protein interaction models to navigators of the bacterial cell envelope Bacteriocins are toxins deployed by bacteria to kill their competitors. Here, I reflect on my laboratory’s work on protein bacteriocins and their immunity proteins from Gram-negative bacteria. We unco...

A gift of an article from the inimitable Colin Kleanthous as he says a moving farewell to his laboratory. A brave, unrepentant and scientifically brilliant journey is described - please have a read, friends.

www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Image-based bacterial phenotyping and antimicrobial drug discovery using smart high-throughput super-resolution microscopy at University of Warwick on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Image-based bacterial phenotyping and antimicrobial drug discovery using smart high-throughput super-resolution microscopy at University of Warwick, listed on FindAPhD.com

iCASE PhD project available in my lab, combining microscopy method development with high throughput screening of bacteria. Applications to antibiotic drug discovery and screening for new cell division proteins. Collaboration with Cairn Research #microsky #bioimaging
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Finally comms from UKRI - on a Sunday evening. No mention of the hundreds of ECRs who will see their careers ended by these decisions and notably no explanation for MRC retrospectively applying cuts and wasting all the work that went into writing, reviewing and scoring applications - £millions

Charge segregation in the C-terminal linker of FtsZ enables Z-ring scaling with prokaryotic cell width Bacterial cytokinesis is orchestrated by the Z-ring, a cytoskeletal structure formed by treadmilling filaments of the tubulin-like GTPase FtsZ. During assembly, filament curvature must match the cell ...

Happy to share a new preprint from the lab: Marko became interested in whether the disordered linker of FtsZ might influence how the protein organizes into the Z-ring. And this led to some surprising findings!
Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I’m happy to share the main result of my PhD, which you can find on bioRxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... If you are interested in learning about a new way to perform DNA-PAINT multiplexing, which we call Combi-PAINT, or if you are interested in the study of mRNA conformation, keep reading! 1/10

SAVE THE DATE!
The next instalment of the long-running Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Division Conference will take place at www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels..., Italy from the 20th to 23rd of April 2027.
Organisers: me, @s-lab.bsky.social, @awehenkel.bsky.social.
More info soon.

#MicroSky

Our first lab paper is out.
Large-scale testing of antimicrobial lethality at single-cell resolution predicts mycobacterial infection outcomes.
From single cells to patients, across tuberculosis and M. abscessus.
👉 doi.org/10.1038/s415...
👇 Thread

Fabian was quicker :) But yes, we have an open postdoc position in bacterial bioenergetics and membrane biology, using on B. subtilis as the model. Come join us! @cbcb-newcastle.bsky.social is a great place to work, and we are a friendly, international lab. Visa+IHS fees covered. #microsky

#MicroSky

Just 4 days until our Grants, Early Bird & Talk deadline closes for #ProkaryoticCellBio!
Join Heath Murray, Jie Xiao, Marc Bramkamp and Ethan Garner 13 - 16 July 2026 in Portugal, alongside our fantastic speaker line-up!
More info on how to register here➡️https://bit.ly/4qCDhtw

AI folks now having to realise what GWAS folks did about studying bacterial genome datasets. Great work by great researchers

Want to do great science and beautiful microscopy with a great guy? @maikbischoff.bsky.social is recruiting a PhD student for his new lab!

#cellbio #devbio #microscopy #bioimaging

Machine Learning for Bio-imaging 9-11 March 2026

🎓Online-course: Machine Learning for Bio-imaging
📅 9–11 March 2026
🧠 Instructor: @hernanmn.bsky.social
Learn CNNs for image segmentation & classification with hands-on Python sessions on real bioimage data.

www.physalia-courses.org/courses-work...

#Bioimaging #MachineLearning

My lab is hiring a postdoc (ERC funded)! If you're interested, get in touch!

We are looking forward to sunnier days and some fantastic presentations at our #ProkaryoticCellBio meeting in Portugal next July! Grants, Early Bird pricing and Talk slots close on 12 Jan, register & submit today to join us! 🌞
👉https://bit.ly/48G29dP

linguists take note 👇

apart from a few oddities, the similarities and differences between US and UK english correspond quite well to those in sporulation in 𝘉. 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘴 and 𝘉. 𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘴.

#MicroSky

Woop Woop, it's out!!! Congratulations everyone. A beautiful paper

We hope micromorph will be widely useful for analysis of bacterial microscopy data and are happy to receive feedback #microsky #bioimaging

@simonecoppola.bsky.social has made micromorph, the first native Python application and library for measuring bacterial morphology. It runs interactively in napari or can be easily integrated into automated Python scripts. It integrates deep learning cell segmentation and is easily extended 🔬🦠🧫