Development of automated patch clamp system for electrophysiology

In this paper, the development of an automated patch clamp system for cellular electrical information is reported. The system involves several developments that enable the following tasks: “pipette and cell localization”, “pipette engaging”, “gigaseal”, and “break-in”. The system enables us to engage the glass micro pipette automatically on the cell membrane, and perform whole cell recording on adherent cells. In a patch clamp experiment, the dynamic changes of resistance of the pipette were monitored, and a successful whole cell recording of a cell was demonstrated.