Advances in patch clamp technique: towards higher quality and quantity.

The patch clamp technique, developed in late 1970s, started a new period of experimental cardiac electrophysiology enabling measurement of ionic currents on isolated cardiomyocytes down to the level of single channels. Since that time, the technique has been substantially improved by development of several upgraded modifications providing so far unavailable data (e.g. action potential clamp, dynamic clamp, high-resolution scanning patch clamp), or facilitating the patch clamp technique by increasing its efficiency (planar patch clamp, automated patch clamp). The current review summarizes the leading new patch clamp based techniques used in cardiac cellular electrophysiology, their principles and prominent related papers.