Abstract
Channelizing the red blood cell: molecular biology competes with patch-clamp.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Clara Musicco, Institute of Biomembranes and Bioenergetics, Italy Jenny Van Der Wijst, Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands
The challenge is to keep the results of both methods in agreement. Such consistency can be shown for a number of channels; just to name successful examples, the voltage-dependent anion channel (VDAC) (Bouyer et al, 2011, 2012) and the NMDA-receptor (Makhro et al, 2013; Hänggi et al, 2014)
After years of debate, it became accepted that the increased conductance in malaria infected red blood cells (RBCs) was mediated by endogenous ion channels of RBCs (Bouyer et al, 2007)
Summary
Both patch-clamp and molecular biology provide powerful tools to investigate ion channels. While patch-clamp probes protein function on the scale of a single cell or even down to a single molecule, molecular biology includes techniques that identify the protein, and requires mostly cell populations.
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