Objective

Patch clamp electrophysiology remains the gold standard for studying ion channels since it was described by Sakmann and Neher in the 1970’s. Although yielding information rich data, conventional patch clamp is technically demanding and not suitable for high throughput screening efforts. Automated patch clamp devices capable of measuring either single cells, or multiple cells simultaneously have been developed, the highest throughput so far recording from 768 cells simultaneously and therefore addressing the needs of high throughput screening laboratories. There is an increasing demand for both higher throughput and more technically demanding features such as temperature control, internal solution exchange, current clamp, dynamic clamp and optogenetics. Here we focus on the Patchliner and SyncroPatch 384/768PE, two automated patch clamp devices recording from 8 or 384/768 cells simultaneously, respectively. In the light of the CiPA initiative, features such as temperature control and current clamp recordings of stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSCs) on automated patch clamp devices have become important. We show temperature-controlled recordings of hERG and nAChα7R on the Patchliner and/or SyncroPatch 384/768PE. We also show action potentials of hiPSC-CMs, and manipulation of action potential duration by introducing virtual IK1 using dynamic clamp on the Patchliner. Activation of channels using internal perfusion and manipulation using light is also shown.