A.) Conventional patch clamp

The tip of a glass-pipette is brought in contact with the membrane of an adherent cell. Finally, after application of a well-defined operation sequence, the membrane patch under the tip of the pipette is ruptured. This enables intracellular access for clamping the membrane voltage and detecting the current flowing through ion channels.

B.) Automated planar patch approach

The micro opening serves two mutually exclusive purposes: (i) attract suspended cells by means of suction and (ii) seal formation and recording.

C.) Automated CYTOCENTERING technique

Two independent channels are used: The CYTOCENTERING Channel is for suction and positioning of cells and the CytoPatch™ Channel is used for patch clamp and recording.

Advantages:

• The separation is favorable to a one channel solution, because the CytoPatch™Channel stays clean and allows a high rate of successful gigaseal formation.
• The pipette geometry is similar to a classical patch pipette.