Capillary Electrophoresis for Sampling Single Nerve Cells

Two micro-capillary electrophoresis techniques are underdevelopment to acquire and determine catecholamines in single nerve cells. The first method involves the analysis of neurotransmitters in a portion of cytoplasm withdrawn from a single cell, and the second method involves the determination of neurotransmitters in a whole nerve cell. Amperometric detection can be used to determine the easliy oxidized species in both of these methods. A large dopamine-containing cell in the brain of the pond snail, Planorbis corneus, has been used as a model system to evaluate both of these microsampling techniques. Results for both the acquisition and separation of neurotransmitters in whole nerve cells as well as the analysis of small portions of single cell cytoplasm are presented here.