The Cytoskeleton of the Squid Giant Axon

The squid giant axon is useful to biologists because of its very large size, but it is the continued applicability of studies on this cell to much smaller diameter mammalian axons that have sustained our interest in this mollusc. For example, in electrophysiology the large size of the squid giant axon has enabled manipulations that would have been difficult or impossible with smaller axons. More recently, new methods, such as patch clamping, have made the detailed study of mammalian cell membranes possible, and these have shown that the basic mechanisms established for the squid giant axon also occur in the excitable cells of other metazoa, including mammals and presumably man.