Single Ion Channel Activity Detection

Creative Bioarray is committed to developing new methods for detecting ion channel activity to help our clients measure the ion currents associated with individual ion channel opening and closing events, providing the experimental basis for studying cell membrane activity with high sensitivity and spatial and temporal resolution.

Background

Membrane-bound ion channels allow ions to flow across cell membranes and are present in the membranes of all cells and constitute essential pharmacological drug targets. There are several types of ion channels, which are gated (opening and closing events) by different external stimuli, such as changes in membrane potential, mechanical deformation, the presence of specific chemicals, etc. Measuring the activity of ion channels in the cell membrane can determine important information about the cellular activity, intercellular interactions, and metabolism.

The first methods developed for measuring the activity of ion channels were based on live-cell recordings. This approach usually requires overexpression of the ion channel of interest, which alters the cellular physiological state with unpredictable consequences for channel activity. Existing techniques for measuring the activity of ion channels by membrane clamp or fluorescence also have limitations that are not conducive to high throughput screening (HTS). There is therefore an urgent need to develop methods to analyze ion channel activity with good readout in a high throughput manner.

Fig. 1 Schematic of Ion channel recordings. (Zhou, 2015)

Our Services

Researchers at Creative Bioarray are working on the development of new methods to probe ion channel activity, in particular methods that can be scaled up to massively parallel high-throughput sensing, and new electrode technologies for in vivo sensing with high spatial resolution. We offer a variety of strategies to help our clients detect the activity of ion channels. Our services include but are not limited to:

• Patch-clamp measurement of ion channel activity.
• Electrical determination of single ion channel activity by measuring the dynamic opening and closing of ion channel nanopores by single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs).
• Recording the activity of single ion channels by reconstituting the synthetic ion channel into a tethered bilayer as part of a microchip design.
• Monitoring the behavior of ion channels at the single-molecule level in the artificial membranes by planar lipid bilayer, which is an electrophysiological technique.
• Recording of synthetic ion channel activity by electrophysiological approaches in living cells.
• Protein ion channel recording by glass nanopore (GNP) membranes.

Applications

• Characterization of ion channel activity
• Study on cell membrane activity
• Construction of stable ion channels-based biosensors
• Drug discovery

Creative Bioarray has developed a variety of methods for the analysis of ion channel activity to meet the scientific needs of our customers in ion channel research. We are pleased to work with you and provide professional and high-quality single ion channel activity analysis services. If you are interested in our services, please contact us for more details.

Reference

1. Zhou, W.; et al. Detection of single ion channel activity with carbon nanotubes. Scientific reports, 2015, 5(1): 1-9.