The US Patent and Trademark Office has awarded another patent to Large Scale Biology Corporation for its automated 2D gel analysis system. US Patent No. 6,451,189 covers an automated computer-controlled method for imaging an electrophoresis gel to select specific spots for excision, storing spot position and abundance data in a database, and comparing the data with a database of 2D gel images to identify the proteins.
The University of California has been awarded US Patent No. 6,448,087 for a method that uses a solubility reporter to measure a protein’s solubility in vivo or in vitro. The reporter can be used in a single living cell to generate a signal indicating whether the protein of interest in the sample is soluble. The method includes the use of random mutagenesis methods to generate mutants of a protein, and the use of the reporter to screen for more soluble versions of the protein. Mutated variants can also be recombined to yield variants with further-enhanced solubility. The inventor, Geoffrey Waldo, is a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is operated by the University of California.