PCSoft program for the acquisition and analysis of voltage-dependent properties of macroscopic calcium channel currents in rat ventricular myocytes

Abstract

Computers that exist with improving priority in physiology laboratories facilitate the automation of experiments as well as the storage and analyses of physiological signals by the performance of real-time and on/off-line dedica-ted custom softwares. Physiological signals converted to electrical signals by transducers can be transferred into com-puters via analog to digital converters (ADC) or inversely, digital electrical signals generated by computers can be applied to physiological systems via digital to analog converters (DAC). In the above view of computers role in e/ec-trophysiology, it has been developed a homemade software named PCSoft for both on-line recording and real-time and off-line analysis of L-type Ca-channel currents by patch-clamp technique. PCSoft can also be able to measure the activation time and inactivation time constants as we/I as voltage-dependent properties of this type channels. Besides the above properties of this software, the ease of use of it, in contrast: to many commercial softwares, was discussed under the light of literature.