On 24 Mar 2002 08:23:56 -0800, mats_trash at hotmail.com (mat) wrote:
>Hi, does anyone know of any agent that can potentiate gap junction
>conductance (inhibition is not a problem), or any relatively simple
>way of measuring the change in gap-junction function (i.e. that
>doesn't involve dye imaging or intracellular electrophysiology).
>>>Cheers
Why would you think that you could measure something as
biophysical and cellular in nature as the conductance of a
gap junction without doing some kind of cellular level
experimental manipulation?
Even if you found a behavioral-type activity (or other
measure above the cellular level) that did depend on
a particular gap junction, you could never be sure that
some change in that activity was not the result of some
parallel pathway involviing chemical synapses.
Even a purely morphological change (from changes in
appearance in electron micrographs) would have to be
verified by physiological measurements.