Prof. Dr. Jerod Denton - Statement about the Patchliner
"One of the biggest advantages of the Patchliner for our lab is that it enables students and fellows without formal training in patch clamp electrophysiology to begin generating meaningful data almost immediately. Instead of spending a couple of frustrating months learning the motor skills and hand-eye coordination necessary for conventional patch clamping with a microscope and micromanipulator, they spend that time designing and executing experiments, generating, evaluating and interpreting data and moving the project forward. The Patchliner also enables experimental flexibility that would be very difficult or impossible with conventional patch clamp rigs. For example, a talented undergraduate in the lab just finished up a series of intracellular drug application experiments. These studies would be difficult for the seasoned electrophysiologist and nearly impossible for an undergraduate student. However, the Patchliner allowed them to be completed in a very short period of time.
Another major advantage is that the Patchliner enables us to rapidly confirm or exclude hits from our primary fluorescence-based high-throughput screen using gold-standard electrophysiological methods. And the quality of the recordings rivals that of a conventional patch clamp rig. In fact, our first observations of pore "knock-off" of a new ROMK inhibitory small-molecule came from the Patchliner. These early observations from high-quality Patchliner recordings provided a clear direction for subsequent mutagenesis work aimed at defining the binding site of this molecule within the cytoplasmic channel pore."
Jerod S. Denton, Ph.D.,Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA