The Column-05-17-2013

Scientists in Portugal have been investigating important molecular and biochemical changes that occur when grapes are growing to find out how they affect wine aroma.

Recombinant monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) are a growing class of therapeutic molecules. Early in the development of MAbs, a large number of harvest cell culture (HCC) samples must be screened for immunoglobulin G (IgG) titer, aggregations, and charge variants. This study describes a two-dimensional (2D) high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) workflow for afinity, size-exclusion, and ion-exchange analysis.

The preservation of food at home is a major concern for all consumers. A group of researchers from INRA in Avignon, France, have conducted a study into tomato aroma with the aim of finding the optimum conditions for storage. According to results published in Food Chemistry,1 the team used gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC?MS) to measure volatile compounds in the fruit.

By implementing automation, a laboratory can instantly increase throughput, improve accuracy, reproducibility, and lab-to-lab consistency.

Agilent Technologies (California, USA) has opened the Asia Glycomics Education Center in South Korea, building on the recent collaboration with Chungham National University (Daejon, South Korea) through the university's Graduate School of Analytical Science and Technology (GRAST).

Consumer protection requires that harmful chemicals are prevented from reaching food products or pharmaceuticals designated for human consumption. Packaging keeps products fresh and protects against direct contamination; however, materials used to manufacture the packaging can be an unintended source of migrating chemicals. To perform routine migration studies, food producers, or packaging suppliers, need to determine barrier properties of primary food packaging.

Incognito dreams of a future with a completely intuitive and flexible data system.

An international team of scientists led by Dr Oliver Craig, University of York (York, UK) has published evidence for the consumption of fish by hunter-gatherers in the last ice age in the journal Nature.1