From the very moment of conception, calcium plays a pivotal role in fetal development. It rushes in as a wave around the egg to herald the sperm's arrival, binding to proteins that help kick off the whole developmental process. From this first influx, calcium continues to play a critical role in how the body's cells respond to outside signals. Calcium tells muscles to contract and nerves to release neurotransmitters, and is at least part of the signal that helps people form and retain memories.

ELISAs, a quick and reliable way of quantifying protein concentrations, have a significant drawback in the age of high-throughput experiments: Each ELISA only measures the concentration of a single protein. Although the amount of sample volume required to test for a single analyte is not large, volume can become a limiting factor when assaying several proteins. The Pierce Boston Technology Center offers a way around this problem with its new SearchLight™ Proteome Arrays, which measure the

Isolating populations of cells can be a tedious job. But St. Paul, Minn.-based BioErgonomics Inc. (BioE) has put an end to the hard work of cell separation with its PrepaCyte™ reagent--a two-step media that agglutinates unwanted cells via surface antigen recognition. Traditional methods of cell separation rely on differences in the cells' density, size, or affinity for antibody-coated beads, as the cells are passed over a density gradient or through columns that selectively retain populati