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Patch Clamp: The First Four Decades of a Technique That Revolutionized Electrophysiology and Beyond

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Reviews of Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology

Part of the book series: Reviews of Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology ((REVIEWS,volume 186))

Abstract

Forty years ago, the introduction of a new electrophysiological technique, the patch clamp, revolutionized the fields of Cellular Physiology and Biophysics, providing for the first time the possibility of describing the behavior of a single protein, an ion-permeable channel of the cell plasma membrane, in its physiological environment. The new approach was actually much more potent and versatile than initially envisaged, and it has evolved into several different modalities that have radically changed our knowledge of how cells (not only the classical “electrically excitable “ones, such as nerves and muscles) use electrical signaling to modulate and organize their activity. This review aims at telling the history of the background from which the new technique evolved and at analyzing some of its more recent developments.

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Abbreviations

ACh:

Acetylcholine

HH:

Hodgkin and Huxley

HTS:

High-throughput screening

PC:

Patch clamp

PCR:

Polymerase chain reaction

Vm:

Membrane potential

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Acknowledgements

I thank Drs. Alessandra Gilardino, Susanna Antoniotti, Chiara Ricca, and Stefano Zucca for technical support and advice. The interviews with Prof. Emilio Carbone and Prof. Stefano Vicini helped to reconstruct the atmosphere of the 1982 Erice School. A special thanks to Stefano Vicini for his invaluable, warm, and continued support and encouragement during the development of this project and to Prof. Giovanni Appendino and Prof. Bernd Nilius for their highly constructive criticism and suggestions, that helped to improve the text.

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  1. Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

    Davide Lovisolo

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Correspondence to Davide Lovisolo .

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Stine Helene Falsig Pedersen

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Lovisolo, D. (2022). Patch Clamp: The First Four Decades of a Technique That Revolutionized Electrophysiology and Beyond. In: Pedersen, S.H.F. (eds) Reviews of Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology. Reviews of Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology, vol 186. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/112_2022_71

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