The state of the art technology for the study of ion channels is the patch clamp technique. Ion channels mediate electrical current flow, have crucial roles in cellular physiology, and are important drug targets. The most popular (whole cell) variant of the technique detects the ensemble current over the entire cell membrane. Patch clamping is still a laborious process, requiring a skilled expe...

This course module introduces the analysis of data from intracellular patch-clamp recordings in the voltage clamp mode, focusing on the detection and statistical description of spontaneous as well as evoked post-synaptic currents (PSCs). After having completed the module, students should be able to detect PSCs by setting appropriate thresholds and analyze amplitude distribution, reliability and...

The conventional patch clamp has long been considered the best approach for studying ion channel function and pharmacology. However, its low throughput has been a major hurdle to overcome for ion channel drug discovery. The recent emergence of higher throughput, automated patch clamp technology begins to break this bottleneck by providing medicinal chemists with high-quality, information-rich d...

Ion channels are essential in a wide range of cellular functions and their malfunction underlies many disease states making them important targets in drug discovery. The availability of standardized cell lines expressing ion channels of interest lead to the development of diverse automated patch clamp (APC) systems with high-throughput capabilities. These systems are now available for drug scre...

INTRODUCTION Ten years ago, the first publication appeared showing patch clamp recordings performed on a planar glass chip instead of using a conventional patch clamp pipette. "Going planar" proved to revolutionize ion channel drug screening as we know it, by allowing high quality measurements of ion channels and their effectors at a higher throughput and at the same time de-skilling the highly...

Mammals use tactile end-organs to perform sensory tasks such as environmental exploration, social interaction, and tactile discrimination. However, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying tactile transduction in tactile end-organs remain poorly understood. The patch-clamp recording technique may be the most valuable approach for detecting and studying tactile transduction in tactile end-or...

The patch clamp technique was first used by Neher and Sakmann (1976) to resolve currents through single acetylcholine-activated channels in cell-attached patches of membrane of frog skeletal muscle. The method they used (described by Neher, Sakmann & Steinbach, 1978) and subsequent refinements (Hamill, Marty, Neher, Sakmann & Sigworth, 1981) have led to techniques for high resolution recording ...

Whole-cell patch recording is an essential tool for quantitatively establishing the biophysics of brain function, particularly in vivo. This method is of particular interest for studying the functional roles of cortical glial cells in the intact brain, which cannot be assessed with extracellular recordings. Nevertheless, a reasonable success rate remains a challenge because of stability, record...