Thermo Fisher GeneFrames are adhesive spacers widely used in bacterial cell biology to make small sealed agarose pads on microscope slides for time lapse microscopy. The GeneFrames protocol was developed by Jan-Willem Veening and is available on JoVE. They work well for obligate aerobic bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis because it is straightforward to cut large air spaces either side of a narrow agarose pad within these frames.

Unfortunately, Thermo discontinued these items. BioRad FrameSeals, which as far as I can tell are the identical product under a different brand name, are also either discontinued or soon to be discontinued.

I have been looking for an alternative to this product and record the results of mine and other’s investigations here. I will keep this updated with any further developments.

  • Grace Biolabs have recently released SecureSeal Frames, a GeneFrame compatible replacement product. My lab have tested the prototype version of these and they work fine for Bacillus subtilis time lapse microsopy. However, at $115 for 25, they are quite pricy at 4x the cost of the old GeneFrames.
  • iSpacers from SUNJinLab appear to be a promising solution. Not tested yet. The company said they can make custom sizes. Prices look good: $20 for 50, $80 for 250. Thanks Ivan Volkov and George Churchman for finding these
  • There is probably a good DIY solution. The key step would be to identify a suitably non-toxic double sided adhesive sheet material. Hobbyist die cutters or makerspace laser cutters could be used to cut the sheet.

Author: Séamus Holden