Issue 16, 2009

Patch clamping on plane glass—fabrication of hourglass aperture and high-yield ion channel recording

Abstract

Planar patch-clamp has revolutionized ion-channel measurement by eliminating laborious manipulation from the traditional micropipette approach and enabling high throughput. However, low yield in gigaseal formation and/or relatively high cost due to microfabricated processes are two main drawbacks. This paper presents patch clamping on glass substrate—an economical solution without sacrificing gigaseal yield rate. Two-stage CO2 laser drilling methodology was used to generate an hourglass, funnel-like aperture of a specified diameter with smooth and debris-free surfaces on 150 µm borosilicate cover glass. For 1–3 µm apertures as patch-clamp chips, seal resistance was tested on human embryonic kidney, Chinese hamster ovary, and Jurkat T lymphoma cells with a gigaseal success rate of 62.5%, 43.6% and 66.7% respectively. Results also demonstrated both whole-cell and single channel recording on endogenously expressed ion channels to confirm the capability of different patch configurations.

Graphical abstract: Patch clamping on plane glass—fabrication of hourglass aperture and high-yield ion channel recording

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Jan 2009
Accepted
09 Apr 2009
First published
14 May 2009

Lab Chip, 2009,9, 2370-2380

Patch clamping on plane glass—fabrication of hourglass aperture and high-yield ion channel recording

C. Chen, T. Tu, C. Chen, D. Jong and A. M. Wo, Lab Chip, 2009, 9, 2370 DOI: 10.1039/B901025D

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements