VOLTAGE-SENSITIVE DYES

[Matthew Larkum]

In article 0100000 at ipruniv.cce.unipr.it, vetfisio at IPRUNIV.CCE.UNIPR.IT () writes:
>Could anyone help me in choosing the appropriate voltage sensitive probe 
>for my experiments? I have to test the electrical activity of cultured 
>mammalian olfactory neurons in response to different odorants. I have a 
>fluorescent optic microscope with a connected camera, so I wonder if a 
>fluorescent probe could be a good idea.
>
>Pino Silvestri
>
>Vetfisio at ipruniv.cce.unipr.it

You might want to get a copy of:
Cinelli, A., Kauer, J.S., "Voltage-sensitive dyes and functional activity
in the olfactory pathway", Annual Reviews in Neuroscience, 1992, 15:321-51.
This reviews a lot of work on salamander olfactory system.  Kauer also
wrote a good article in Trends in Neuroscience in the last 2 years.  Don't
have the reference to hand.

LaMantia, A.-S., Pomeroy, S.L., Purves, D., "Vital Imaging of Glomeruli
in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb", Journal of Neuroscience, March 1992, 
12(3): 976-988.

They used RH414 and a Bio-Rad MRC500 laser-scanning confocal microscope 
but also give a list of other dyes they tried (26 of them!).

Other dyes not mentioned in these are di-4-ANEPPS and di-8-ANEPPS that
I know work well in rat spinal cord.  By the way, if you're interested
in recording activity in the form of action potentials, you're going
to want better than the 25/50 Hz resolution that most European cameras
have.  Perhaps you have a wizz-bang camera, though.  Other options seem
to be limited to using a confocal microscope in line scan mode or an
array of photodiodes.

Matthew.
larkum at optolab.unibe.ch