The patch-clamp technique in the study of secretion

One of the basic cellular functions of virtually every cell type is the exocytotic release of molecules synthesized, stored and packaged into intracellular vesicles or granules. Over decades much effort has been concentrated on elucidating the chain of events leading to exocytosis. Unfortunately, the nature of the process that ultimately induces membrane fusion is not known, nor has it been established definitively whether or not the final steps in the secretory cascade are identical in different cells. Although the fusion between vesicle and plasma membrane has been neatly documented by electron micrographs, it was only recently that the technique of time-resolved membrane capacitance measurement has provided a more detailed insight into mechanistic aspects of exocytosis, both in terms of the fusion event and the steps involved in stimulus-secretion coupling.