How to do Patch Clamp Experiments
Although patch clamping is now a routine experimental technique, it nevertheless remains technically challenging, and requires skill, patience and perseverance. This manual concentrates purely on the technical aspects of patch clamping, and in order to supply the user with the vitally important practical information, we provide free of charge with the Optopatch a copy of "Microelectrode Techniques: The Plymouth Workshop Handbook" (2nd edition, 1994). This book includes several chapters on patch clamping, and much of the other information it contains is also relevant. A practical course such as the one at Plymouth (which takes place every September) forms an excellent introduction to the subject, and anyone who has a chance to attend one is strongly recommended to do so. Newcomers to patch clamping would be well advised to read the appropriate parts of the book before delving too deeply into this manual.
The other book that may be appropriate to mention here is the second edition of "Single Channel Recording" (editors Sakmann and Neher, Plenum Press, 1995), which covers both the theoretical and practical aspects of patch clamping in very considerable detail. However, newcomers are recommended to read the Plymouth book first.
Both books also discuss the analysis of patch clamp recordings in considerable detail, so we shall not cover that topic here either. At the time of writing this section (October 1996) Cairn does not have any commercial software available for this purpose, although as a result of planned University collaborations, that situation could change in the future. Meanwhile, in addition to the commercial software available from other companies, we can also recommend the public-domain software produced by John Dempster at Strathclyde University (his full address is in the Plymouth book). Please also note that the new computer interface that we introduced for use with our spectrophotometry system in 1994 has the ability to take in patch clamp data as well, and the software for that interface is currently being extended to support this and other facilities.
