Gomez J Francisco, Brioso Miguel A, Machado J David, Sanchez Jose L, Borges Ricardo
Unidad de Farmacología, Facultad de Medicina, and Departamento de Física Fundamental y Experimental, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2002 Oct;971:647-54. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2002.tb04544.x.
Amperometry is a powerful tool for studying the exocytotic process. Catecholamines released from a single secretory vesicle are oxidized by a carbon fiber microelectrode placed on a chromaffin cell membrane. This phenomenon can be recorded online as an amperometric signal. Each event of exocytosis is called a secretory spike. Several kinetic parameters can be extracted from spikes to get important information about catecholamine storage and to follow the time course of exocytosis. The large amount of data requires the use of computer programs. We describe software, written for Igor Pro (Wavemetrics, Lake Oswego, OR, USA), that allows the offline analysis of amperometric signals. It includes (1) the automatic analysis of a large collection of experiments without user intervention; (2) the visual check of located spikes; (3) data pooling from several experiments to create galleries with hundreds of thousands of spikes. In addition, we have designed a new filtering method for amperometric data. It provides an excellent tool to enhance the signal/noise ratio with minimal artifacts. This filter allows one to obtain more reliable spike parameters.
安培测量法是研究胞吐过程的一种强大工具。从单个分泌囊泡释放的儿茶酚胺会被置于嗜铬细胞膜上的碳纤维微电极氧化。这种现象可作为安培信号在线记录下来。胞吐的每个事件都称为一个分泌峰。可以从峰中提取几个动力学参数，以获取有关儿茶酚胺储存的重要信息，并跟踪胞吐的时间进程。大量的数据需要使用计算机程序。我们描述了一款为Igor Pro（Wavemetrics公司，美国俄勒冈州莱克奥斯韦戈）编写的软件，该软件可对安培信号进行离线分析。它包括：（1）无需用户干预即可自动分析大量实验；（2）对定位的峰进行视觉检查；（3）汇集多个实验的数据以创建包含数十万峰的图库。此外，我们为安培数据设计了一种新的滤波方法。它提供了一个出色的工具，能以最小的伪迹增强信噪比。这种滤波器使人们能够获得更可靠的峰参数。
