Apart from being one of the top conferences for biophotonics, there is also a full biophotonics lab setup for the conference with the top instruments from every microscopy company on site. Please check the link here
During the conference the organizers put up the Challenge Bio where any participant can bring their unsolved biological question to the people doing workshops with the hope that someone can help them solve this.
This year Dr Padilla - Parra and Dr Alvarez won the Challenge Bio by answering the question from Alexandre Bokhobza (from Laboratoire de physiologie cellulaire, INSERM U1003 in Lille, France).
Alexander’s challenge was: the study of ORAI1 and ORAI3 protein dynamics in living cells while forming homo or heteromeric ion channels; structure determination of the channels. Alexander brought his cells, fluorescently tagged constructs and drugs that target ORAI1 and ORAI3 complexes. Dr Padilla-Parra and Dr Alvarez did a couple of experiments on site that clearly showed what Alexander was looking for!
Alexander’s question was answered as part of Dr Padilla-Parra’s and Dr Alvarez’es two-day workshop "Detecting protein aggregation and interactions in live cells: a practical on Number and Brightness" based on the quantitative imaging modalities they had put in place here at the WHG and that is also the basis of their latest paper on HIV entry (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-018-0113-x/).
Well done & congratulations!