Senior Design Team sdmay18-10 • Patch-clamp microchip testing circuit interface

Patch-clamp is a technology in biological engineering field which means to catch cell with tiny clamp and observe the bioelectricity behavior of the cell. Our project is focusing on how to build up a set of electric environment and circuit to provide operational interface between the patch-clamp and electron microscope. With patch-clamp, human will observe a clearer picture about cells, which for our project are neurons, the nerve system cells. This could be done with getting a clear electric current square graph of the currents that generated when ions try to enter and leave the membrane of neurons, and this is what we do for our project to build the interface to capture the current graph. These behaviors of neurons will lead biological engineers to look for many possible cures of some serious nerve diseases that could not be cured right now.

With patch-clamp microchip, we could observe a clearer picture about cells, which for our project are neurons, the nerve system cells. This could be done with getting a clear electric current square graph of the currents that generated when ions try to enter and leave the membrane of neurons. We are going to measure the ion channel potential of cells and the action potential of cells under external stimulations after we setting up the patch-clamp microchip successfully. Meanwhile, during the process of experimental measurements, we should figure out a method to store these neuron cells to keep them alive.