Voltage Clamp - Technique

Technique

The voltage clamp is a current generator with two electrodes. Transmembrane voltage is recorded through a "voltage electrode", relative to ground, and a "current electrode" passes current into the cell. The experimenter sets a "holding voltage", or "command potential", and the voltage clamp uses negative feedback to maintain the cell at this voltage. The electrodes are connected to an amplifier, which measures membrane potential and feeds the signal into a feedback amplifier. This amplifier also gets an input from the signal generator that determines the command potential, and it subtracts the membrane potential from the command potential (V_command - V_m), magnifies any difference, and sends an output to the current electrode. Whenever the cell deviates from the holding voltage, the operational amplifier generates an "error signal", that is the difference between the command potential and the actual voltage of the cell. The feedback circuit passes current into the cell to reduce the error signal to zero. Thus, the clamp circuit produces a current equal and opposite to the ionic current. This can be measured, giving an accurate reproduction of the currents flowing across the membrane.

Cole developed the voltage clamp technique before the era of microelectrodes, so his two electrodes consisted of fine wires twisted around an insulating rod. Because this type of electrode could be inserted into only the largest cells, early electrophysiological experiments were conducted almost exclusively on squid axons. Squids squirt jets of water when they need to move quickly, as when escaping a predator. To make this escape as fast as possible, they have an axon that can reach 1 mm in diameter (signals propagate more quickly down large axons). The squid giant axon was the first preparation that could be used to voltage clamp a transmembrane current, and it was the basis of Hodgkin and Huxley's pioneering experiments on the properties of the action potential.