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Posted 8 July 2003. Crop Management. Agilent Technologies Announces Rapid Method for Characterizing Soybean Quality Using Agilent Bioanalyzer Agilent Technologies, Inc. Palo Alto, CA (June 4, 2003) - Agilent Technologies Inc. today announced a method for rapidly characterizing soybean quality using expressed protein profiles. These protein profiles are generated using the Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer with the Protein 200 Plus LabChip Kit, which provides accurate and precise analyses of protein extracts from soybeans in 45 minutes or less. B-conglycinin (7S) and glycininin (11S) are the primary seed storage proteins in soybean, comprising about 70 percent of total storage proteins. This gives them critical economic importance. The relative levels of these two proteins significantly impact the nutrition, taste and texture of food products derived from soybeans. For this reason, soybean lines that preferentially express these proteins continue to be an active target in improving soybean quality. Both conglycinin and glycininin are complex aggregates of smaller protein subunits. The Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer with Protein 200 LabChip, an automated microfluidic electrophoresis system, is well suited to analyze proteins in the applicable subunit size range. Samples of soy protein are loaded, separated and analyzed for relative protein composition in less than 45 minutes. The level of accuracy and precision in determining protein size and concentration are sufficiently good to characterize experimental seedlines based solely on these protein profiles, providing a highly effective means for characterizing new transgenic seedlines. This method is part of Agilent's recently announced AgBiotech program, which is developing a full range of agriculture-specific products and applications based on Agilent's existing microarray and microfluidics technologies. Agilent has also introduced a new microarray for Magnaporthe grisea (rice blast fungus) and an updated version of its Arabidopsis microarray kit. More information about the new AgBiotech program is available at www.agilent.com/chem/agbiotech. Further information is available by requesting Agilent application note "Characterization of Transgenic Soybean Seedlines by Protein Expression with the Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer," Agilent publication 5988-9441EN. This note is available without charge from any Agilent sales office or Agilent's Web site at www.agilent.com/chem. Contact: Christina Maehr |