In vitro Tissue Bath

An isolated tissue bath is a chamber in which isolated organs and/or tissue samples can be administered with drugs or stimulated electrically enabling the quantitative measurement of the contraction and relaxation responses.

In our lab, we use this technique for monitoring the occurred contractions or relaxations in circular or longitudinal smooth muscle strips following administration of a drug of interest. Briefly, obtained muscle strips from distinct parts of alimentary canal are mounted in Krebs buffer solution, where the temperature is maintained at 37^oC and gassed with a mixture of 95%O₂-5%CO₂.

Mechanical activity is monitored through force displacement transducers connected to a computer through bridge amplifier. Responses are acquired through a computer-based data acquisition system.

Here are the examples of recording traces obtained from rat gastric corpus and fundus samples:

Electrical field stimulation (EFS) protocol is conducted by a stimulator connected to stimulus isolator. The stimulatory current is applied through a pair of platinum wire electrodes through which the preparation was surrounded by.

Here are the examples of EFS-induced relaxation (A) and contraction responses (B) recorded from rat gastric fundus samples: