Richard S. Norman <rnorman at umich.edu> wrote in message news:<qovr9ucu046c4kfovqaha25phij7215t45 at 4ax.com>...
> 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.
:) yeah I know it was a lot to ask, and my main question was the
potentiator really... I was hoping that there might be some kind of
chemical techinque to assess gap junction function (though for the
life of me I couldn't think of anything obvious). I don't have the
budget to do lucifer yellow imaging or electrrophysiology.
Cheers anyway.