Sigworth Laboratory
Yale
School of Medicine Patch Clamp Technologies The patch clamp technique (Neher, 1992) is the central method in modern electrophysiology. It allows the recording of single ion-channel currents, or alternatively currents from entire small cells. It traditionally uses a glass pipette as an "electrode" which is gently applied to a cell membrane through control by a skilled operator. There is much room for improvement in the technique, especially in view of its difficulty and the large electrical capacitance introduced by the glass pipette. We have been working on materials and designs for "planar" patch clamp electrodes. After unsuccessful attempts with silicon and quartz "chips" with micromachined apertures, we now have been using the well known silicone elastomer PDMS as a material to interface to the cell membrane. After a plasma treatment that renders the surface hydrophilic, PDMS will readily form the high-resistance seal to cell membranes that is required for patch-clamp recording (Klemic et al., 2002). PDMS can also be molded to submicron feature sizes, so the only problem has been to find a suitable molding process. After much work with micromachined silicon masters, we now are using a very simple method in which a stream of air forms the electrode chamber. -Kate Klemic, Xiaohui Li and Azucena Munden, in a collaboration with Mark Reedand Jim Klemic. |
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 Planar patch clamping |
Last modified: February 20, 2005 ns.
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