Perforated Patch-Clamp Technique

The great advantage of patch clamp in cellular physiology is that it allows sensitive and reliable analysis of the electrical activity of cell membranes at the molecular level. Whole cell is the most popular variant of the patch-clamp technique. It is easy to obtain and it allows the use of intra- and extra-cellular recording solutions particularly devised to isolate the ionic membrane conductance of interest, or to intracellularly apply modulators or drugs. Patch clamp is therefore a very powerful technique, but the study of intracellular signaling-and the assessment of its impact on cellular electricity-requires the experimenter to perform recordings from virtually intact cells.