We are testing various drugs that may alter the firing rate, and currently we use primary cultured neurons and neuroendocrine cells, which is a lot of work -- that's why we were wondering whether there might be a cell line alternative.
We have worked with AtT20 cells. They are neuroendocrine cells that also fire action potentials, but the action potentials are of long duration (50-100 ms) and the dV/dt of the upstroke is slow. I am hoping to find a cell line that has fast upstroke, short duration action potentials (sodium channel driven). Do the GT1-7 cells have sodium-channel driven action potentials?
I've never used them myself, but PC-12 cells are rat pheochromocytoma cells that differentiate into neurones (used as a model of DRG neurones) in the presence of nerve growth factor and as far as I know express both functional TTX-s and TTX-r NaVs.
Thanks! I will give the NGF-treated PC-12 cells a try, if I can find any papers that show that they have fast action potentials after NFG treatment.
I completely agree with the suggestions of Pasha Grachev because we used the GT1-7 in current clamp, but really the sodium current of these neurons is very low compared to primary culture cortical neurons, less than 1/10!!
Enzo Wanke
Yes, that is the reason for asking this question. If you want to record action potentials by extracellular recording (e.g. .Multielectrode Array), faster, sodium action potentials are easier to record than slower, calcium channel - dominant action potentials.
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