Fortune Magazine gave it plenty of ink.

So have a host of other trade and business journals of any consequence, including American Laboratory and International Laboratory.

So what's the buzz? It might be called the smallest development in the history of analytical chemistry - the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer.

Described by Fortune as approximately "the size of a toaster", the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer is the first commercial instrument to incorporate Lab-on-a-Chip technology.

Caliper Technologies and the Hewlett-Packard Chemical Analysis Group (now evolved into Agilent Technologies) signed a collaboration agreement last year in which Caliper agreed to provide the LabChip™ technology while Agilent would integrate this into instruments and market the resulting systems.

The Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer represents he first fruits of that collaboration. The new instrument signals the beginning of the next era in analytical chemistry - the age of the miniaturized automated laboratory.

Nanoscalar

LabChip™ technology incorporates microfabrication techniques borrowed from the semiconductor industry to build various chip architectures. The chips comprise microchannels fabricated in glass that create interconnected networks of fluid reservoirs and pathways. The chips represent the heart of a nanoscale laboratory.

The Agilent 2100 bioanalzyer improves the quality of nucleic acid analysis by integrating separation, detection and digital data processing within a single compact instrument. The system is intended for use by molecular biologists and biochemists analyzing samples in the context of cloning experiments, quality control of sequencing templates, analysis of PCR and RT-PCR products, quality control of DNA array probes and mutation detection via RFLP.

At the moment, the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer is being offered with three LabChip kits, two for DNA sizing and one for RNA analysis assay. All the ingredients necessary to run an analysis, including chips and chemistry, are provided in each assay kit. More chips are coming, with the development of new kits for other applications well under way.

Serious savings

Agilent's LabChip instruments are destined to have a significant impact on laboratory cost-effectiveness. For one thing, nucleic fragment size and concentration can be determined in one-half to one-third the time of conventional gel separation technology, accompanied by improved sensitivity and reproducibility.

Further, sample consumption is reduced to near negligibility, with sample injections running in the picoliter range. In a discipline where samples can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per ounce, this new frugality has got to have an impact on the bottom line.

Equipment costs will drop sharply as well. Why? The chip is not only replaceable but, at about $12 per, it's disposable. Changing a method simply requires the user to insert a different type of chip and employ the appropriate automated software protocol. Sample handling, analyte separation, detection, quantitation and subsequent data processing are all integrated within the same hardware / software assembly.

Savings potential is augmented by the reduced need for a full complement of application-specific hardware or periodic system upgrades, along with the low training requirements associated with the system. Training on the new instrument is minimal, particularly for anyone already comfortable with conventional slab gel electrophoresis.

Clearly, 1999 will go down as the year that analytical chemistry finally moved out of the realm of the 18th century laboratory of workbenches and rooms full of dedicated equipment, and into the 21st century of nanoscale chemistry, microfluidics, and the miniaturized lab.