Recording and control of ion channel currents in bilayer and patch-clamp experiments

A program was developed for the control and recording of ion-channel activity in lipid bilayers and cell membranes. The software runs on a PC under DOS. Stimulation waveforms may be applied simultaneously with recording at a sample rate of 10 kHz and at 12-bit resolution. Comments may be stored with the recordings, also during timed repetitive pulse applications. The time critical parts and graphics are written in C and assembler whereas the I/O and control is written in Quick-Basic 4.5 (QB). A nested 16-level macro facility allows the use of complex protocols. Array-buffer arithmetic is supported. There is mouse support for cursor measurements and parabolic offset subtractions. DOS applications such as editing macro files may be executed without halting the program. The program runs in the QB interactive environment with the foreign language routines in a library and is open to customization. The library of drawing subroutines support up to 1024 x 768 resolution.