Agilent Technologies of Palo Alto, Calif., has launched 1.8 mm-particle Zorbax Rapid Resolution High Throughput columns for liquid chromatography that are said to double the efficiency of 3.5 mm columns, providing improved resolution and faster analysis. The new columns are available at 15- and 50-mm length with several Zorbax bonded phases.
The Pfam Consortium has released Pfam 9.0, a collection of 5724 protein domain family alignments that were constructed semi-automatically using profile hidden Markov models. Pfam families contain functional annotations and cross-references to other databases. Access is available at several sites, e.g. pfam.wustl.edu.
Millipore of Billerica, Mass., has released 5,000 and 50,000 molecular weight cut-offs for its Amicon Ultra centrifugation filtration devices for the concentration of proteins. Sample volumes up to 15 ml can be concentrated within 15 minutes, with typical sample recovery of more than 95 percent, according to the company.
Biacore International has launched five new sensor chips as well as a thiol coupling kit for its surface plasmon resonance platform. Sensor chip CM4 reduces non-specific binding of positively charged molecules, sensor chip CM3 reduces steric effects with high molecular weight molecules, sensor chip C1 can be used for whole cells and viruses, sensor chip Au has a plain gold surface to apply self-assembling monolayers, and sensor chip L1 can be used to capture lipid vesicles. The thiol coupling kit allows users to immobilize ligands without an amino group.