"The MECA OPTO system easily coupled to my inverted microscopes and worked with a wide range of objectives. The MECA OPTO-holder provides traditional convenient bilayer formation and channel insertion with good electrical noise characteristics while markings make locating microwells quick and easy. Simultaneous optical and electrical interrogation of the microwell aperture accelerates lipid bilayer validation for ion channel measurements."
"Contrary to my initial expectations, the Orbit mini has performed exceptionally well for our application, with vastly improved signal-to noise characteristics over our best recordings on the home-built system.The compactness of the instrument makes for flexible and convenient placement in the lab. With a tiny footprint, it sits on a table or desk accompanied by only a laptop. In addition, bilayers are painted 'blind' with a Teflon wand supplied by Nanion without observing the partition through a microscope. Thus, the entire support-package of microscope, illuminator, Faraday cage, vibration-table, and rig-rack is eliminated. The acquisition software is intuitive and robust, and the data can be stored in formats readable by the Axon analysis programs that we routinely use. Moreover, the four electrically independent holes in the chip-partition means that four bilayers can be monitored simultaneously, thus quadrupling the probability of catching a clean single channel to record"
