Patch clamp electrophysiology and capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry metabolomics for single cell characterization.

ABSTRACT: The visual selection of specific cells within an ex vivo brain slice, combined with whole-cell patch clamp recording and capillary electrophoresis (CE)-mass spectrometry (MS)-based metabolomics, yields high chemical information on the selected cells. By providing access to a cell's intracellular environment, the whole-cell patch clamp technique allows one to record the cell's physiological activity. A patch clamp pipet is used to withdraw ∼3 pL of cytoplasm for metabolomic analysis using CE-MS. Sampling the cytoplasm, rather than an intact isolated neuron, ensures that the sample arises from the cell of interest and that structures such as presynaptic terminals from surrounding, nontargeted neurons are not sampled. We sampled the rat thalamus, a well-defined system containing gamma-aminobu

SUBMITTER: Aerts JT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3964733 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature