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High Resolution liquid imaging using scanning nanopipette microscope
  • SICM = Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy
  • Uses pipette-based SPM for easy, non-contact high-resolution imaging of soft materials in liquid
  • Subsequent to imaging, the same pipette tip is used to form a gigaseal for patch clamping on your sub-micron area of interest
  • SICM provides access to smaller structural elements that were previously unpatchable. Examples are patch clamp measurements on a single microvillus or inside a T-tubule

ionscope ICnano system for SICM
Here is a short-list of the ScanIC system’s features and benefits :

  • a simple, robust, and reliable method for liquid SPM maging
  • imaging of soft materials using non-contact methods
  • fits onto inverted light microscope or can be run stand-alone
  • can be integrated with confocal configurations
  • patch-clamping with the ScanIC system gives higher resolutions and higher success rates
Productivity of the “Smart” Patch Clamp

Although a formal ROI analysis has not yet been worked out, there is plenty of well documented evidence for the highly increased productivity of SICM over conventional patch clamp methods.  In fact, two scientific publications attest to this issue.  The references are:

Gorelik, J., Y. Gu, et al. (2002). "Ion channels in small cells and subcellular structures can be studied with a smart patch-clamp system." Biophys J 83(6): 3296-303.

Gu, Y., J. Gorelik, et al. (2002). "High-resolution scanning patch-clamp: new insights into cell function." Faseb J 16(7): 748-50.

Skill Level Requirements

One of the major unsung benefits over current methods is that a technician can definitely do patch clamping with SICM. They do not need a Ph.D. in biophysics! Note, the SPM part of the experiment requires good initial training, because this technology is quite foreign to most researchers in the life sciences, but this part of the experiment is fundamentally much easier than the patching part.
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