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My Must-See Science at BPS18

As I’m reading through the abstracts for Biophysics 2018, I can’t help but get excited about all the cutting-edge research there is to discover at this meeting! Although my schedule is double and triple booked with talks and posters, I’ve bookmarked one of each type of presentation as absolute must-sees. Check it out!

Sub-group Saturday talk:
Progress in developing (single) inorganic voltage nanosensors
Shimon Weiss (Bar Ilan University; UCLA)
Nanoscale Biophysics Subgroup; Esplanade, Room 160
Saturday, 1:35 PM
Why I’m excited:
This is an approach to voltage-imaging that I’m not familiar with. Although great improvements have been made to genetically encoded voltage sensors, non-invasive voltage imaging is another story. I anticipate some impressive movies at this talk of membrane-embedded nanosensors detecting single action potentials!

Platform talk:
Dissecting function and distribution of sodium channels and gap junctional proteins using super-resolution patch-clamp
Anita Alvarez-Laviada (Imperial College London)
Esplanade Room 155
Monday, 10:45 AM
Why I’m excited:
Sodium channel clustering and cooperativity are hot topics in neuroscience and excitable-cell biology. These authors may have some clues about how the extent of Nav1.5 clustering affects functional coupling of cardiac myocytes. I want to know more about this mechanism and what the implications for neural communication are!

Symposium talk:
Uncovering the organelle interactome: dynamic imaging of multiple organelles
Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz (HHMI Janelia Research Campus)
North, Lower Lobby, Room 25
Tuesday, 9:45 AM
Why I’m excited:
The Lippincott-Schwartz lab has produced some breathtaking images of intracellular organelles at resolutions that reveal never-before-seen details of these structures. In this talk I’m looking forward to hearing about their most recent improvements in fluorescence imaging that captured the localization of, and interactions between 6 organelles in the same cell!

Poster:
Cell-wide mapping of ORAI1 channel activity reveals functional heterogeneity in Stim1-Orai1 puncta
Joseph L. Dynes (UC Irvine)
Exhibit Hall ABC, L3502-Pos/LB65
Sunday, 1:45 PM
Why I’m excited:
My lab studies properties of membrane contact sites, and Ca2+ store refilling is an important function for these structures. In addition to getting some insight about endoplasmic reticulum-plasma membrane junction function, I’m excited to learn more about this author’s high-resolution approach to simultaneous Ca2+ imaging and patch-clamp electrophysiology.



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