Patch-clamp electrophysiological characterization of neurons in human dentate gyrus

The dentate gyrus (DG) is a substructure within the hippocampal formation that is crucial to memory processing through its cell types and projections. However, much less is known about the correlation between these characteristics and genetic expression. Together with our partners, we aimed at characterizing genetic expression in human and murine DG. For the first phase of this project, we performed experiments in a total of 9 brain samples, deriving 40 usable cells that were recorded using patch-clamp (whole-cell, current-clamp), 26 of which had their cytoplasm collected for further analysis. This preliminary study showed that we have the technical ability to perform patch-seq at a possible rate of success of around 80%, since 21/26 cells that had their cytoplasm collected contained enough detectable RNA content to suggest further sequencing was possible. The data we are sharing represents the patch-clamp experiments performed during this first stage of the project. It includes the recordings of 40 cells from human brain tissue which underwent our full characterization protocol.