Wow, patch clamp! I had a collaboration with a colleague who measured change in calcium currents in membranes of HeLa cells treated with compounds I've been working with, it was super exciting!
Question - why do you have to kill a mouse to isolate egg cells? Why can't you just isolate them from sedated female, like in humans (maybe it's a stupid/obvious one, I never worked with mice so far)?
I'm actually not 100% sure. I just know that my supervisor kills them, cuts them open and removes part of the fallopian tube, in which the egg cells are contained. I guess it wouldn't make much sense to sew the mice together again after. Everything is so tiny.
Seems like it's an economics thing, mice are cheap and mice/rats don't have the same kinds of protections that other lab animals have.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/11/lab_mice_are_they_limiting_our_understanding_of_human_disease_.html