Panasonic of Osaka, Japan, has received US Patent No. 8,475,646, "Biosensor, thin film electrode forming method, quantification apparatus, and quantification method." The provided biosensor includes two pairs of electrodes in a specimen supply path. Methods include detecting an electrical change in the first pair of electrodes; detecting an electrical change in the second pair; judging a shortage of specimen amount that is needed for measurement when an electrical change is not detected in the second detection step; indicating a shortage of the specimen amount; and stopping measurement of the substrate content once the shortage is indicated.
Samsung Electronics of Seoul and JSR of Tokyo have received US Patent No. 8,475,998, "Compound synthesis method, microarray, acid-transfer composition, and biochip composition." A compound is bound to a substrate to form a film. A second film is then formed on the first film using an acid-transfer composition. Afterwards, the second film is exposed to remove the protecting group from the first compound under an exposed area of the second film.
Illumina of San Diego has received US Patent No. 8,476,022, "Method of making an array of nucleic acid colonies." A substrateis provided that hosts a patterned surface of features that are spatially separated from each other. The substrate is contacted with a solution of different target nucleic acids to seed a subset of the features that contact the solution; the nucleic acids are then amplified to form a nucleic acid colony at each of the features in the subset.
Illumina has also received US Patent No. 8,476,044, "Method of nucleic acid amplification." According to the patent, a nucleic acid molecule is annealed to an appropriate immobilized primer. The primer is then extended and the molecule and the primer are separated from one another. The extended primer can then be annealed to another immobilized primer and the other primer can be extended. Both extended primers can then be separated from one another and can be used to provided further extended primers. The process can be repeated to provide amplified, immobilized nucleic acid molecules.
Plexera of Woodinville, Wash., has received US Patent No. 8,477,313, "SPR apparatus with a high performance fluid delivery system." A flow cell microarray is provided for surface plasmon resonance test device and a fluid delivery system. These are coupled to the flow cell array and configured to deliver fluids to the flow cell continuously. According to the patent, the fluid delivery system may include two pumps for pumping the fluids.
Agilent Technologies of Santa Clara, Calif., has received US Patent No. 8,478,537, "Methods and systems for clustering biological assay data." The methods include applying statistical analyses to bisected subsets of the data at selected cut-off values to identify one or more break points in the data set. In certain aspects, the statistical analyses employed are based on determining the p-values of two-tailed t-tests calculated using the bisected data at each cut-off value. Computer programming and systems are also provided to cluster data sets from biological assays, including array-based assays, according to the methods.
Agilent has also received US Patent No. 8,478,545, "Identification of aberrant microarray features." The method consists of obtaining a log transformed normalized value indicating the amount of hybridization of a test sample to a first feature on the nucleic acid array; calculating a z-score for the first feature using the log transformed normalized value and the distribution of reference log transformed normalized values that indicate the amount of hybridization of control samples to the same feature on reference arrays; and identifying the test feature as aberrant if it has a z-score that is above or below a defined threshold.