Thread by @realscientists

The answer is*drum roll*

Whole cell patch clamping!

I will also accept "girl, idk what this is."

Patch clamping is one of the techniques that I use to record electrical activity of heart cells which can inform us of normal or abnormal behavior.

Where do these cells come from? Since I can't use this technique to measure electrical activity from an actual human heart in the lab, we make our own!

As you can see here, I was shook. I mean, we make heart cells from scratch and they start beating! WILD.

Here's THE BEST PART

Okay so boom, we make these heart cells (healthy or diseased)

I record their electrical profile, so we know what looks healthy & what doesn't

THEN, I add the (potential) therapy we're developing to the cells & measure its effect on their electrical profile

The diseased heart cells will beat irregularly (like in arrhythmia), & if our therapy does what we want it to do, it should restore a healthy, normal rhythm.

If it doesn't, back to the drawing board. #thatsscience

That's basically part of my thesis work in a nutshell.

#TLDR

Diseased heart cells beat abnormally= 🪦

Adding our (potential) therapy to these cells *should* make them beat normally =🌞

I can measure this with patch clamping.

Ta da! New therapy for irregular heart beat (arrhythmia)*

*caveat - might not work, I'm testing this :)