Automatic analysis for amperometrical recordings of exocytosis

J Neurosci Methods. 2000 Nov 30;103(2):151-6. doi: 10.1016/s0165-0270(00)00309-5.

Abstract

Amperometry is a widely used technique for monitoring the secretion of catecholamines (CA) by exocytosis. The use of carbon fibre microelectrodes allows the on-line recording of CA released from a single secretory vesicle. Amperometric signals are generated by oxidation of the quantally released CA close to the electrode tip. Each event of exocytosis is called a secretory spike. Here we describe a program written for IGOR (Wavemetrics, Lake Oswego, OR, USA), which may be used to analyze amperometric signals off-line. The procedures allow, (i) digital filtering and analysis of the current noise, spike identification and calculation of spike kinetic parameters; (ii) spike review; (iii) pooling spikes and data to create galleries, tables and histograms of measured parameters which can be exported to a graphic format or files for further analysis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Action Potentials / physiology*
  • Adrenal Medulla / cytology
  • Adrenal Medulla / metabolism
  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Catecholamines / metabolism*
  • Cattle
  • Chromaffin Cells / cytology
  • Chromaffin Cells / metabolism
  • Electrophysiology / instrumentation
  • Electrophysiology / methods*
  • Exocytosis / physiology*
  • Microelectrodes / standards*
  • Models, Neurological
  • Secretory Vesicles / metabolism*
  • Secretory Vesicles / ultrastructure
  • Software / standards*

Substances

  • Catecholamines