User talk:Niels37/sandbox

Peer Review

To start off, I felt this article excelled in the readability for a wide variety of audiences. In other words I feel that people who are new to voltage clamp will be able to learn a lot from this article. Another part of the article that I thought was very insightful was the explanation of how the solutions on either side of the membrane act as capacitors etc. This will be very helpful for people who are trying to understand the physics aspects of voltage clamping. Another part of the article that I loved was the pros and cons paragraph. I could imagine a student coming to this paragraph wondering if voltage clamp would be appropriate for their experiment. Whether it was for a grant proposal or an assignment, this paragraph could definitely point them in the right direction. The image was effective in helping the reader visualize what a voltage clamp might look like. This is important, because often times I have found that once I can visualize what a experimental method looks like, I can better understand the mechanism behind the method.

Here are a few suggestions/thoughts I had for article: In the first paragraph you mention that voltage clamp is mostly used for xenopus oocytes. You may want to mention if there is another cell type that can be used for voltage clamps. In the second paragraph you mention when working with voltage clamps you set a command voltage and measure current. It may be beneficial to mention current clamp here in a sentence and explain the difference. (Maybe).

Another idea that might help readers is to use an example of an experiment that uses voltage clamp. For example, if you briefly mentioned alpha 7 nicotinic acetycholine receptors it would help the reader see that when acetylcholine applied, the channel opens and thus less current is needed to keep the voltage clamped at the command voltage. That is one thing that really helped me understand the voltage clamp technique. A picture accompanied with this explanation could be powerful as well.