Courtesy of Bruker Daltonics The life science mass spectrometry industry has experienced a boom recently with a spate of new instruments and technological advances. Billerica, Mass.-based Bruker Daltonics continues this trend with the new microTOF™ electrospray ionization-time-of-flight (ESI-TOF) mass spectrometer, introduced at the 2003 PittCon conference in Orlando, Fla. The microTOF is a benchtop instrument that offers twice the resolution--10,000 FWHM (full width, half maximum) ver

When it comes to structural biology, bigger really is better. Most biological processes are performed by enormous multicomponent complexes, such as the ribosome. To solve the structures of these monsters, biologists traditionally have used two different but complementary techniques, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X-ray crystallography. They have had considerable success using the latter technique for protein structure determination, but the former technique has lagged behind, in part be

Courtesy of Advalytix  The Advacard is used instead of a conventional coverslip during microarray hybridization in the ArrayBooster instrument. Many microfluidics-based lab-on-a-chip devices use external pumps and micromachined parts to move liquids through tiny channels.1 Brunnthal, Germany-based Advalytix, however, takes a different approach: Its programmable microfluidic biochips dispense with micromechanics and instead employ a technology found in cellular phones to move sample volum

Courtesy of Advion BioSciences Electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry (MS), in which peptides are ionized as they elute from a liquid chromatography (LC) column, typically requires high flow rates, which reduces sensitivity and consumes large quantities of sample. Nanoelectrospray techniques for proteomics are more efficient, but can be labor-intensive and time-consuming. To make the process more practical for high-throughput experiments, Ithaca, NY-based Advion BioSciences recently

Courtesy of PerkinElmer  PerkinElmer's prOTOF 2000 MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. Boston-based PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences has released the prOTOF™ 2000, the first commercially available matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometer to feature orthogonal geometry and collisional cooling. The technology, originally developed at the University of Manitoba and sublicensed from instrumentation manufacturer MDS Sciex, offers improved

Courtesy of Beckman Coulter  Beckman Coulter's ProteomeLab PF 2D Protein Fractionation System Fullerton, Calif.-based Beckman Coulter recently announced a new program to tackle the development of tools for proteomics research from a systems biology standpoint. Called ProteomeLab™, the initiative integrates existing technology with new instrumentation and software to "simplify, automate, and standardize the multiple processes involved in protein research," says Jeff Chapman, strateg

Image courtesy of CLONDIAG Companies in the microarray sector are trying to take the technology out of core facilities and put it into the hands of individual researchers by developing technologies such as smaller, less-costly scanners and more streamlined software for array analysis. These improvements could make microarray technology more attractive to labs that lack the large budgets required for sophisticated biochip-related equipment. CLONDIAG® Chip Technologies of Jena, Germany, has

Courtesy of Affymetrix Instrument manufacturers, recognizing that bench space is at a premium, are downsizing their products, and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Affymetrix is no exception. The company's new GeneChip® Scanner 3000, a PC-sized scanner that requires neither external laser power supplies nor special ventilation systems, is one-third the size of the company's current system, according to Chip Leveille, senior director of corporate marketing and instrumentation. Leveille says the Ge

Graphic: Bob Crimi, Reprinted with permission from Nature Genetics, 32:465-66, Dec. 2002 By all accounts the genomics research community has embraced nucleic acid microarrays. San Jose, Calif.-based growth consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimates that the market will grow at an annual compounded growth rate of 63% between 1999 and 2004--from $232 million (US) to $2.6 billion.1 Revenue for related equipment such as arrayers and scanners topped the $500 million mark in 2002, says Frost &am

Courtesy of CombiMatrix The research community's rapid acceptance of microarrays notwithstanding, technical challenges remain. Biochip developers continue to grapple with these issues while upgrading their offerings and adding new product lines in response to research trends. Perhaps the biggest challenge to microarray technology is standardization--ensuring that data collected from different microarray platforms can be accurately compared. Compounding this problem is the absence of a unified

Courtesy of CombiMatrix Despite a relatively mature marketplace for array instrumentation, new contenders continue to squeeze between the cracks to vie for market share. Currently, there are both new offerings from old standbys and new faces in the scanner and arrayer world. A number of companies introduced new array platforms last year. Two of these, QIAGEN's SensiChip system and Amersham Biosciences' CodeLink platform, are discussed elsewhere in this issue. Gaithersburg, Md.-based MetriGen

Courtesy of CombiMatrix A number of companies are using the lessons and technologies of traditional genomics--the microarray chief among them--to delve into the more challenging world of functional genomics and proteomics. Most of these new arrays are low-density and, therefore, lack the high-throughput capacity of their DNA and oligo counterparts. Their use is also limited by a variety of technical challenges that are difficult to overcome. Antibody arrays, for example, can be expensive and