Electrophysiological Studies of Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels Using QPatch HT, an Automated Patch-Clamp System

Voltage-gated sodium (Nav) channels are highly sensitive to membrane potential andhave fast gating kinetics. Patch clamp electrophysiology has long been the gold standardfor studying these channels. Combining high throughput with high information content/accuracy, automated patch clamp technologies have emerged as critical tools in ionchannel drug discovery. Described in this unit is the use of QPatch, one of the automatedpatch clamp systems, to study Navchannel function and pharmacology.