Physiology 3140A Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Patch Clamp, Voltage Clamp, Bert Sakmann

• School: Western University
• Department: Physiology
• Course: Physiology 3140A
• Professor: John Di Guglielmo

Document Summary

Studies of ion channels and associated electrical activities in excitable cells depend heavily on the techniques employed. Here we will learn patch clamp recording technique including current clamp, voltage clamp and different configuration of patch clamp recordings. A good understanding of different recording configurations will help us to learn ion channels in excitable cells. Patch electrodes or patch pipettes have relatively larger tips (~1 m) and suction through the path pipette is the main technique to form a tight seal with the membrane. Patch clamp recordings can be obtained from a small piece of membrane or whole cell the patch clamp technique was invented by german scientists, erwin neher and bert sakmann. Strong suction will rupture the membrane to form whole cell recording mode (bottom right panel) Current-clamp (i-clamp: record voltage (commonly mv, close to native. Voltage recordings can be made by whole-cell patch recording.