Whole‐Cell Patch‐Clamp Electrophysiology of Voltage‐Sensitive Channels

Ion channels are critical modulators of electrical excitability in neurons and are targets of a wide variety of neurotoxicants, including metals and insecticides. The only way to directly examine effects of toxicants on ion channel function in an individual cell on a physiologically relevant time scale is to utilize patch-clamp electrophysiological techniques. This unit presents the basics of utilizing whole-cell patch-clamp techniques to study effects of toxicants on voltage-sensitive Ca(2+) channels in neurons grown in culture.