You’re probably familiar with patch clamping, a fairly common method used to measure currents across biological membranes. Patch clamping hits a roadblock though, when you’re dealing with an organism that has a cell wall. Sarah Assmann’s lab at Penn State University provides one of CSH Protocols’ June featured articles detailing methods for doing electrophysiology in plant cells. The first step is the generation of “protoplasts”, plant cells where the cell walls have been digested away enzymatically. From there, patch clamping follows in a relatively straightforward manner, although there are specific modifications necessary for individual species and cell-types. While this protocol deals with Arabidopsis guard cells, a table is given showing resources for information on cells in a variety of other plant species. Like all of our monthly featured articles, Isolation and Whole-Cell Patch Clamping of Arabidopsis Guard Cell Protoplasts is freely available to subscribers and non-subscribers.