Analytik Jena Science Award honours outstanding scientific articles

The first two Analytik Jena Science Awards are given to Dr. Carlos Abad of the Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing (BAM), Berlin, and Natalie Rangno of the Institute of Wood Technology Dresden. With this award, Analytik Jena is honouring scientific articles in which Analytik Jena products have been used find solutions for particularly challenging applications. The award was presented for the first time at Analytik Jena Days 2019.

Dr. Carlos Abad et al. looked at the determination of boron isotope ratios in a graphite furnace using Analytik Jena’s Continuum Source High-Resolution Atomic Absorption Spectrometer contrAA. Here, the molecule absorption method is analysed in an AAS instead of using atomic absorption. The special molecule is formed directly in the oven with the application of a molecule forming reagent. The contrAA made it possible to determine an isotope ratio with AAS for the first time. The article first appeared in fall 2017 in “Spectrochimica Acta Part B,” from the publishing company Elsevier.

Natalie Rangno et al. examined the importance of automated DNA extraction for the diagnosis of wood-destroying fungus in the field of wood and building preservation. Since the existing extraction systems for plants, yeasts, or bacteria are inadequate due to the resulting lack of or poor quality of extracted DNA, a variety of protocols for the purification of fungal DNA from wood samples have been optimized and successfully tested in an automated extraction system. The result of this work is an automated extraction process with purification chemistry, and the automated platform Innupure C16 of Analytik Jena, which makes it possible to isolate fungal DNA from samples and subsequently use them for diagnostics. The article was published in Holztechnologie 57 (2016) 6.

At Analytik Jena Days, the expert and user conference for customers, partners, press representatives, and employees, around 150 experts came together from June 26–27, 2019, in the German city of Idstein to discuss the latest technological trends and important topics for the future of lab analysis.