Biotechnology techniques detection methods

Progress in instrumentation has considerably improved the sensitivity of fluorescence detection. Advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques allow detection at single molecule level, which opens up new opportunities for the development of fluorescence-based methods or assays in material sciences, biotechnology and in the pharmaceutical industry. 

These have been somewhat limited examples of the contribution of new molecular methods in developing environmental biotechnology for hazardous wastes. Collectively, these and other developing methods such as highly sensitive biochemi< detection techniques will provide revolutionaiy new ways to analyze the complexity, activity, and performance of biodegradative processes in the environment and in waste treatment technology. 

Advances in biotechnological diagnostic techniques are likely to provide more sensitive methods of detecting very low levels of exposure to some chemicals. As these new techniques become commercially available, the PMCD should consider adding them to the medical surveillance program. 

A review of capillary electrophoresis applications in pharmaceutical analysis was published in 1993, and the goal of this chapter is to provide an update on the various disciplines within the technique and includes selected applications. Recent developments in the areas of capillary technology, instrumentation, and detection will be reviewed here. Useful strategies for method development involving several classes of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology products will be addressed. The formats within capillary electrophoresis have evolved to such an extent that this chapter is not comprehensive in scope. Therefore, the reader will be directed to other reviews on the various aspects of capillary electrophoresis. Of particular interest to many separation scientists may be a special issue of an Applied Biosystems Newsletter, which addresses the future role of CE, method development in CE, and selected applications in the area of drug analysis and protein separations [7]. 

HPLC-UV diode-array detection (DAD) or HPLC-MS techniques take advantage of chromatography as a separation method and DAD or MS as identification and/or quantification methods. Both DAD and MS can rapidly provide on-line UV and MS information for each individual peak in a chromatogram. In most cases, the identification of the peaks can be made directly on-line by comparison with literature data or with standard compounds. However, when no standard compounds are available, the rapid preliminary identification process becomes significantly more complex. The general identification problem in bioprocess monitoring described below exists in all cases when a new biotechnological process is initiated and when the product is not available as a reference substance. 

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