ACQUIRE & ANALYZE Revision II is a comprehensive data acquisition and analysis package designed specifically for use on in vitro epithelia controlled by the VCC600, VCC MC2, VCC MC6 or VCC MC8 voltage/current clamps. It consists of data acquisition hardware, interface cables and the ACQUIRE and ANALYZE (A&A II) software package. A&A II runs in the Windows® environment to measure current, voltage, conductance and resistance from one to eight tissues simultaneously. Please consult manufacturer for complete description.
Sample screen shot. Left pane: Resistance (TER) vs time. Right pane: Short-circuit current (Isc) vs. time. Graph colors, symbols, gridlines, graph parameters, tissues to plot, etc. may be set for each pane. Any number of individual panes may be defined and displayed. Other features include zoom controls, experiment protocols, event marks, data extraction tools, and quick data summary tools.
Unlike general-purpose data acquisition packages, Acquire & Analyze is written specifically for the study of epithelial tissues. For example, you want to measure the dose/response curve of an agent on the Isc and Gt by progressive additions in eight tissues. To do this you monitor the Isc and Gt on the computer until stable basal readings are attained. You place an event mark in the file and make the first addition of the agent to all 8 tissues. When the current reaches a new stable level (or a specified time has passed) you add another event mark and make the second addition of the agent.
You repeat this process until all additions have been made. To summarize the affects on Isc and Gt, use Analyze to graph the data for all 8 tissues, then display the movable data bar and click the left mouse button to position the bar over the basal currents just to the left of the first event mark. Follow this by clicking the right mouse button to save the mean values of currents, conductances and voltages to a spreadsheet. Simply repeat the mouse movements and clicks to obtain the data for each addition of the agent.
The spreadsheet, which will then contain the time of measurement, Isc, Gt and Vt for each tissue at each test concentration, can be saved and imported directly into Lotus or Excel spreadsheets for further analysis. The above hypothetical experiment would require considerable effort to set up, analyze and then integrate the results with other similar data sets using any of the general purpose data acquisition programs on the market (much less a chart recorder), whereas it is a simple, quick procedure using Acquire & Analyze.
Related:
HA 693145
Data Acquisition
· Activate/deactivate acquisition on individual clamp units
· Setup and toggle between fast and slow acquisition speeds to capture transient events; speeds can be set by user and can be changed at any time during experiment
· Place time marks into file to indicate when experimental manipulations (e.g., drug additions) have been made; marks can be predefined and selected from menu or be entered from keyboard
· Graphically display current, voltage, conductance, resistance, calculated open circuit voltage and calculated Isc during data acquisition in multiple formats
Data Analysis
· Graphical/digital readout of current, voltage or conductance vs. time
· Plot raw or area corrected data
· User definable x, y scaling; zoom all, in, out, or previous; pan left, right, up or down
· Extract data under movable, adjustable width time bar in file format compatible with spreadsheet files. Extracted data may be individual points or mean values. For example, to compare measured flux to mean Isc over flux period set bar width equal to flux period, position it to start of period as indicated by Time Mark, and then press right mouse button to save to spreadsheet. Traditional method of averaging two Isc values (beginning and end values) when data are recorded manually can lead to significant errors if current is time variant. Data extraction may be specified for any of up to 8 clamps. Extracted data may be imported into commercial graphics packages to produce publication quality graphs. Standard graphs for experiment record keeping purposes may be obtained directly from analysis package.
· Linear regression analysis of conductances vs. currents can be performed on data within time bar to estimate pericellular pathway conductance. Data is saved to spreadsheet compatible file. Correct experiment design and interpretation is responsibility of user.
· Graphs (e.g., Isc vs. time, Gt vs. time) may be output to Windows compatible printers or to HP compatible (HPGL language) plotters in variety of formats. Data may be plotted without or with clamp i.d. numbers to ease reading of data when multiple traces occur on same graph. Graphs may be labeled by typing text labels on graph or by selecting text describing appropriate time marks inserted during data acquisition. Time marks may be suppressed on output or displayed either as tic marks or as vertical dashed lines.