Variations
Several variations of the basic technique can be applied, depending on what the researcher wants to study. The inside-out and outside-out techniques are called "excised patch" techniques, because the patch is excised (removed) from the main body of the cell. Cell-attached and both excised patch techniques are used to study the behavior of individual ion channels in the section of membrane attached to the electrode.
Whole-cell patch and perforated patch allow the researcher to study the electrical behavior of the entire cell, instead of single channel currents. The whole-cell patch, which allows for low resistance electrical access to the inside of a cell, has now largely replaced high resistance microelectrode recording techniques to record currents across the entire cell membrane.
Read more about this topic: Patch Clamp
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