November 1, 2007 (Vol. 27, No. 19) Improving Online Monitoring with Capacitance Sensors and Spectroscopy Online monitoring of cell density has become a routine task during cell culture and ...

When the capacitance of the cell membrane is increased, neurons become less excitable -- that is, less likely to fire an action potential in response to input from other cells.

Since membrane capacitance affects how quickly a cell can respond to its synaptic inputs, this finding has important implications for the transmission of signals within and between cells.

New progress in a long-standing debate about the nature of biological cell membranes could be made by considering which aspects of the membrane can be captured in simplified simulations.