Project Timeline: June 2010 to present
I was invited by Dr. Urisu to work at National Institutes of Natural Sciences to develop a biosensor. More specifically: planer patch clamp with silicon substrate to understand ion channel activity of a cell. While I was in Bangladesh (mu home country) and working at North South University (NSU) I was completely detached from research activities. Although I was enjoying teaching and working with my students at NSU, I thought this opportunity will help me to return back to research activities.
About this project: To understand the electrophysiological system of cells and neurons, scientists are using patch-clamp technology. Patch Clamp is an established technology (invented in 1980s) that deal with different type of channels of a membrane. But the limitations of conventional patch clamp are it can read a single channel and single channel-type activity only. Moreover the instruments are very expensive (few thousand dollars). At present there is no technology than can investigate multi channel activities in real time. At Urisu lab, we are developing such multi channel reading-capable device by using semiconductor device technologies.
I should note, while I was a PhD student in this lab, I designed the first generation planer patch clamp device around 2004. Around that time there were few researchers who worked in this area. Now “planar patch clam” is an established scientific area and numerous scientific papers and books have been published.
After six years, I have found that the device was improved and single channel activities were successfully measured by my colleagues of this lab. But still, none could not read the multi-channel activities.
Figure: Design planer patch clamp used at Urisu Lab (at present)
But the present device needs a lot of improvements for reading multi channel activities. My goal will be to improve the design and understand the circuit mechanism of this device.
About Patch Clamp (from Wikipedia):
The patch clamp technique is a laboratory technique in electrophysiology that allows the study of single or multiple ion channels in cells. The technique can be applied to a wide variety of cells, but is especially useful in the study of excitable cells such as neurons, cardiomyocytes, muscle fibers and pancreatic beta cells. It can also be applied to the study of bacterial ion channels in specially prepared giant spheroplasts. The patch clamp technique is a refinement of the voltage clamp. Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann developed the patch clamp in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This discovery made it possible to record the currents of single ion channels for the first time, proving their involvement in fundamental cell processes such as action potential conduction. Neher and Sakmann received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991 for this work.