BioTechnica International Inc. has sold its LCR diagnosticstechnology rights to Abbott Laboratories. The companies signed athree-year joint research agreement in 1989 to developBioTechnica's ligase chain reaction technology..LCR uses a different enzyme system than Cetus' polymerase chainreaction technology to create billions of copies of a target gene foranalysis. BioTechnica (NASDAQ:BIOT) of Overland Park, Kan., said itis divesting businesses and technologies that don't fit the company'sfocus on crop agriculture.

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