The Great DBH Rant

In July, I attended a week-long course hosted by Professor David Colquhoun at the University College London on single channel data analysis and the mechanistic implications of single channel data. It is amazing the amount of information that is contained in single ion channel recording. Professor Colquhoun is arguably the doyen in the ion channel field and I must first of all thank him for accepting me into the course this year. For those of you who do work on electrophysiology and/ or single channel, you would no doubt have come across the “bible”, the blue book “Single Channel Recording” by Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher. Professor Colquhoun wrote the 3 chapters on single channel analysis, and more importantly, him and Professor Hawkes devised the general approach to fitting rate constants to single channel data using matrix methods. I am not sure about the rest of you but I have read those 3 chapters (which is pretty much on permanent loan by myself from the library) over and over again that I am beginning to be able to recite some sections. Yet I come no closer to understanding the matrix method, or put more precisely, the construction and manipulation of the Q-matrix, which pretty much contains all you need to know about a particular ion channel mechanism. However, after the course, everything has slotted into place quite well. Finally the penny has bloody dropped! I highly recommend this course, and for those interested, register your interest at the UCL website. Places are very limited and there is a selection process for this course but all very very worth it.