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Classical patch clamp setup, with microscope, antivibration table, and micromanipulators. During a patch clamp recording, a hollow glass tube known as a micropipette or patch pipette filled with an electrolyte solution and a recording electrode connected to an amplifier is brought into contact with the membrane of an isolated cell.
However, in this example, half of that voltage drop is across the electrode. The experimenter thinks he or she has moved the cell voltage by 40 mV, but has moved it only by 20 mV. The difference is the "series resistance error". Modern patch-clamp amplifiers have circuitry to compensate for this error, but these compensate only 70-80% of it.
The feedback amplifier subtracts the membrane voltage from the command voltage, which it receives from the signal generator. This signal is amplified and returned into the cell via the recording electrode. The voltage clamp technique allows an experimenter to "clamp" the cell potential at a chosen value.
The basic equipment needed to record single units is microelectrodes, amplifiers, micromanipulators and recording devices. The type of microelectrode used will depend on the application. The high resistance of these electrodes creates a problem during signal amplification.
In 1991, the German scientists Drs. Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their development of the patch-clamp technique that allows the detection of minute electrical currents through cell membranes.
Patch-clamp automation instrumentation became commercially available in 2003. Due to the initial high cost this near to 20 years old technology was originally intended to serve the biotech and pharmaceutical industries but it has since also been used in academia and nonprofit settings, in connection and coexisting with other associated or ...
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The sucrose gap technique allows ion currents to be measured in multicellular tissues. Although voltage clamp and patch clamp methods are also effective in studying the functions of neurons, the sucrose gap technique is easier to perform and less expensive. Furthermore, the sucrose gap technique can provide stable recordings from small cells ...
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