SHORT BIO OF PATCH CLAMP TECHNIQUE
Responsável: Patrícia Monteiro
Biografia: Patrícia Monteiro, PhD, investigadora de pós-doutoramento na Escola de Medicina (EM) da Universidade do Minho.
Licenciada em Ciências Farmacêuticas pela Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de Coimbra (2001-2007) e doutorada em Neurociências pela Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra. Entre 2010-2015, a investigadora desenvolveu o seu trabalho no laboratório do Professor Doutor Guoping Feng, no Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), em Boston, nos EUA. A investigadora integra actualmente a equipa de investigação do Professor Doutor Nuno Sousa, no Domínio de Investigação em Neurociências no Instituto de Ciências da Vida e da Saúde (ICVS) da Universidade do Minho. Os seus principais focos de investigação são na área dos circuitos neuronais e doenças neuropsiquiátricas, tendo sido recentemente distinguida com uma EMBO postdoctoral fellowship e uma Branco Weiss fellowship (Instituto de Tecnologia de Zurique - ETH) para estudar o impacto funcional do stress nos circuitos neuronais.
.
Programa do workshop:
Unraveling brain networks has been a matter of strong debate and one of the biggest scientific battles of the 20th century. This is well described in “The War of the Soups and the Sparks”, where in 1950-ish, the neuroscientific debate between pharmacologists –who viewed brain’s activity as a product of chemical release- opposed to neurophysiologists –who argued for an electrical communication basis- is brought into light. We now know that neurotransmitters (“the soup”) released at synapses are essential to control action potentials (“sparks”) and the summation of both (soups + sparks) is the basis for an intricate crosstalk between nerve cells. Synapses are the contact points between neuronal branches and correct synaptic wiring and transmission, are crucial for proper central nervous system development/function. Hodgkin and Huxley revealed the ion channel events of action potentials in 1952 using the voltage-clamp technique, being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1963 for their outstanding work. In the late 1970s, Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher refined the voltage-clamp technique and resolved for the first time single channel currents across a membrane patch of a frog skeletal muscle. They were also awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine (in 1991). Thanks to them and many others, the patch clamp technique is nowadays a laboratory technique in electrophysiology that allows us to study ion channels in cells.
