Use of a Potential Sensitive Dye in Studies on Phospholipid and Sarcoplasmic Reticulum Vesicles

A wide variety of dyes, when applied to biological membranes, change their optical properties along with a change in membrane potential. Experiments performed on neurons, where the membrane potential was measured simultaneously by an intracellular microelectrode, showed good agreement between the electrical and optical determinations (see Cohen and Salzberg 1978 for review).