When Vector Laboratories was founded more than 30 years ago, monoclonal antibodies, biotin-avidin products or lines of lectins were not available in the marketplace. In 1976, we purified the first line of lectins and quickly became the world’s leading supplier of these products for use in studying glycoconjugates in tissues, on cells, or isolated from fluids or extracts. In our second year we introduced the Biotin-Avidin System. Realizing that the strong interaction between biotin and avidin could be utilized to form nearly covalent linkages between a molecule derivatized with biotin and avidin conjugated with a detectab