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Darlene Solomon, vice president and director of Agilent Laboratories, poses inside the company's building in Palo Alto, CA, on March 23, 2004.
Agilent Laboratories is Agilent Technologies' central research organization. Agilent Technologies Inc. is a global technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company's 28,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries.
Biochip technology, a combination of semiconductor technology with molecular biology, has become a multi-billion dollar industry over the past few years. A biochip is a collection of miniaturized test sites (microarrays) arranged on a solid substrate that can perform thousands of biological reactions, such as decoding genes, in a few seconds. It uses tiny strands of DNA to latch onto and quickly recognize thousands of genes at a time. Biochips helped to dramatically accelerate the identification of the estimated 80,000 genes in human DNA, an ongoing world-wide research collaboration known as the "Human Genome Project". In addition to genetic applications, the biochip is being used in toxicological, protein, and biochemical research as well as to rapidly detect chemical agents used in biological warfare so that defensive measures can be taken.
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