What is 'dynamic action potential clamp'?
We recently developed the 'dynamic action potential clamp' (dAPC) technique (Berecki et al., 2005, 2006, 2007; Berecki & van Ginneken, 2006), as an extension of the 'dynamic clamp' technique in cardiac electrophysiology (Wilders, 2005, 2006). With this technique, a selected native ionic current of an isolated cardiac myocyte, e.g. a ventricular myocyte, can effectively be replaced with wild-type or mutant current recorded from a human embryonic kidney (HEK)-293 cell that is voltage-clamped by the free-running action potential of the myocyte.
Both a computed model of the ventricular cell and a freshly isolated myocyte can effectively be used in dAPC experiments, resulting in rapid and unambiguous determination of the effects of an ion channel mutation on the ventricular action potential. The dAPC technique represents an elegant and powerful tool to study various cardiac ion channels and may also prove useful in related fields of research, e.g. in neurophysiology.
Who is involved?
The dynamic action potential clamp technique has been developed in the Departments of Physiology and Experimental Cardiology by Géza Berecki, Jan G. Zegers, Arie O. Verkerk, Ronald Wilders, and Antoni C.G. van Ginneken.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Publications
- Berecki G, Zegers JG, Verkerk AO, Bhuiyan ZA, de Jonge B, Veldkamp MW, Wilders R, van Ginneken ACG. HERG channel (dys)function revealed by dynamic action potential clamp technique. Biophys J 2005; 88: 566–578 | PubMed | Full Text | PDF | Supplemental File (PDF)
- Berecki G, Zegers JG, Bhuiyan ZA, Verkerk AO, Wilders R, van Ginneken ACG. Long-QT syndrome-related sodium channel mutations probed by the dynamic action potential clamp technique. J Physiol 2006; 570: 237–250 | PubMed | Full Text | PDF | Supplemental Data (PDF)
- Berecki G, van Ginneken ACG. Cardiac channelopathies studied with the dynamic action potential clamp technique. Physiology News 2006; 63: 28–29 | PDF
- Berecki G, Zegers JG, Wilders R, van Ginneken ACG. Cardiac channelopathies studied with the dynamic action potential-clamp technique. In: Molnar P, Hickman JJ, eds. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 403: Patch-Clamp Methods and Protocols. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ; 2007: 233–250 | PubMed | PDF
- Verkerk AO, Zegers JG, van Ginneken ACG, Wilders R. Dynamic action potential clamp as a powerful tool in the development of a gene-based bio-pacemaker. Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2008; 2008: 133–136 | PubMed | PDF
- Verkerk AO, Zegers JG, van Ginneken ACG, Wilders R. Development of a genetically engineered cardiac pacemaker: insights from dynamic action potential clamp experiments. In: Destexhe A, Bal T, eds. Dynamic-Clamp: From Principles to Applications. Springer, New York; 2009: 399–415 | PDF
- Verkerk AO, Wilders R. Traditional and dynamic action potential clamp experiments with HCN4 pacemaker current: biomedical engineering in cardiac cellular electrophysiology. In: Mello CAB, ed. Biomedical Engineering. In-Tech Education and Publishing, Vienna, Austria; 2009: 499–516 | PDF
- Wilders R. 'Dynamic clamp' in cardiac electrophysiology. J Physiol 2005; 566: 641 | PubMed | Full Text | PDF
- Wilders R. Dynamic clamp: a powerful tool in cardiac electrophysiology. J Physiol 2006; 576: 349–359 | PubMed | Full Text | PDF
DynaClamp software
'DynaClamp' is our dAPC software, which runs on an Intel Pentium-4 processor PC under real-time Linux (RT-Linux). Our DynaClamp software is available for download here (ZIP archive).
Contact
Software related questions should be addressed to Jan Zegers. Other questions may be addressed to Ronald Wilders.
Unique visitors since January 1, 2008:
View Stats
Last modified: January 16, 2010