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Biomedical subjects

C Ince

Publications and source records attributed to C Ince.

41 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

A teflon culture dish for high-magnification microscopy and measurements in single cells.

A simple tissue culture dish is described which permits the use of oil immersion optics (X 100) while maintaining access to cells in culture. In combination with a micro-CO2-incubator (Ince et al. 1983) long-term as well as short-term experiments can be performed under microscopical control. The teflon dish is re-usable, resistant to sterilization procedures, and easy to assemble. Standard glass coverslips with adherent cells are secured to the dish by an aluminium ring with a bayonet fitting. Both phase-contrast and interference-contrast microscopy with high magnification can be used. The dish is of particular use in electrophysiological investigations where the patch-clamp technique is used and frequent exchange of cultures is required. With this unit, single ion channel activity in cultured human monocytes was measured. The dish has also been used in studies in which membrane potential measurements were performed with glass microelectrodes in small cells under culture conditions. The applications described include video time-lapse sequences of phagocytosis with micro-organisms presented to mouse peritoneal macrophages with broken-tipped pipettes. This easy to use, multi-purpose dish offers the cell physiologist a valuable aid for the manipulation and observation of single cells in culture.

Animals

Oscillatory hyperpolarizations and resting membrane potentials of mouse fibroblast and macrophage cell lines.

L cells (a mouse fibroblast cell line) and macrophages have been reported to exhibit slow oscillatory hyperpolarizations and relatively low membrane potentials, when measured with glass micro-electrodes. This paper describes the role of micro-electrode-induced leakage in these oscillations for L cells and a mouse macrophage cell line (P388D1). Both L cells and macrophages showed fast negative-going peak-shaped potential transients upon micro-electrode entry. This shows that the micro-electrode introduces a leakage conductance across the membrane. The peak values of these fast transients were less negative for L cells (-17 mV) than for macrophages (-39 mV), although their sustained resting membrane potentials were about equal (-13 mV). This indicates that the pre-impaled membrane potential of macrophages is more negative than that of L cells. Ionophoretic injection of Ca2+ into the P388D1 macrophages showed the existence of a Ca2+ -dependent hyperpolarizing conductance presumed to be involved in the oscillatory hyperpolarizations of L cells and macrophages. Cells increased in size by X-ray irradiation to reduce membrane input resistances were still found to be susceptible to micro-electrode-induced leakage. Impalement transients upon entry of a second electrode during a hyperpolarization evoked by a first electrode, were often step-shaped instead of peak-shaped due to the high membrane conductance associated with hyperpolarization. Since peak-shaped impalement transients were always seen with the first impalement both in oscillating and non-oscillating cells, oscillatory hyperpolarizations cannot be regarded as spontaneously occurring in the unperturbed cells but are induced by micro-electrode penetration. Since the hyperpolarizing response can be evoked by ionophoretic injection of Ca2+, and oscillatory as well as single hyperpolarizing responses are absent in a Ca2+ -free medium, it is concluded that the Ca2+ needed intracellularly to activate the hyperpolarizing responses enters the cell via the leakage pathway introduced by the measuring electrode.

Animals

Micro-CO2-incubator for use on a microscope.

A simple micro-CO2-incubator designed for use on the stage of an inverted microscope is described. This micro-incubator is easy to use, offers a handy tool for the culture of cells under the microscope and its performance compares well with that of a conventional CO2-incubator. A standard disposable culture dish can be placed in the micro-incubator. The culture medium is covered by a gas-permeable layer of mineral oil, this protects the culture from the environment without affecting the culture conditions and allows easy cell manipulation under microscopical control.

Animals

Estimation of the membrane potential of cultured macrophages from the fast potential transient upon microelectrode entry.

Analysis of membrane potential recordings upon microelectrode impalement of four types of macrophages (cell lines P388D1 and PU5-1.8, cultured mouse peritoneal macrophages, and cultured human monocytes) reveals that these cells have membrane potentials at least two times more negative than sustained potential values (E(s)) frequently reported. Upon microelectrode entry into the cell (P388D1), the recorded potential drops to a peak value (E(p)) (mean -37 mV for 50 cells, range -15 to -70 mV) within 2 ms, after which it decays to a depolarized potential (E(n)) (mean -12 mV) in about 20 ms. Thereafter, the membrane develops one or a series of slow hyperpolarizations before a final sustained membrane potential (E(s)) (mean -14 mV, range -5 to -40) is established. The mean value of the peak of the first hyperpolarization (E(h)) is -30 mV (range -10 to -55 mV). The initial fast peak transient, measured upon microelectrode entry, was first described and analyzed by Lassen et al. (Lassen, U.V., A.M. T. Nielson, L. Pape, and L. O. Simonsen, 1971, J. Membr. Biol. 6:269-288 for other change in the membrane potential from its real value before impalement to a sustained depolarized value. This was shown to be true for macrophages by two-electrode impalements of single cells. Values of E(p), E(n), E(h), E(s), and membrane resistance (R(m)) measured for the other macrophages were similar to those of P388D1. From these results we conclude that E(p) is a better estimate of the true membrane potential of macrophages than E(s), and that the slow hyperpolarizations upon impalement should be regarded as transient repolarizations back to the original membrane potentials. Thus, analysis of the initial fast impalement transient can be a valuable aid in the estimation of the membrane potential of various sorts of small isolated cells by microelectrodes.

Animals