Patent 7338583 was granted and assigned to Hitachi on March, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Analysis is performed efficiently in an electrophoresis apparatus while avoiding deterioration of samples. A plurality of sample plates are stored in frozen storage. When a particular sample plate is being analyzed, other sample plates are stored in a standby unit. In this way, a plurality of sample plates can be stored under cool conditions and analysis can be performed efficiently.