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In Brief This Week: Metabolon, FinnGen, BD, PerkinElmer, EureKare, More

NEW YORK – Metabolon, through its German subsidiary of the same name, this week announced a multi-year collaboration with the FinnGen biobank research initiative in Finland to provide metabolomics data for population health studies. FinnGen will incorporate metabolomic datasets to better understand how genetic drivers of disease may impact biological function and influence disease progression. The study has already identified more than 400 new disease-associated variants enriched in the Finnish population, findings that provide the potential for further functional studies and new insights into disease mechanisms, Metabolon noted. The company's metabolomics platform is optimized to detect and identify more than 5,400 metabolites across 70 major biochemical pathways for a wide array of samples such as plasma, urine, and tissues. 


Becton Dickinson said this week that its board of directors has approved a quarterly cash dividend of $.87 per share of common stock, to be paid on March 31 to stockholders of record as of March 10. In addition, the firm said the indicated annual dividend rate is $3.48 per share. 


PerkinElmer said this week its board has declared a regular quarterly dividend of $.07 per share, payable on May 13 to shareholders of record as of April 22. 


European investment firm EureKare said this week that it has joined the DNA Data Storage Alliance, a consortium formed in 2020 by Illumina, Microsoft, Twist Bioscience, and Western Digital that aims to create and promote an interoperable storage ecosystem based on DNA as the storage medium. 


Evosep and ZefSci said this week that they have partnered on service coverage for the Evosep One liquid chromatography platform in the US. Under the agreement, ZefSci, a maintenance and service provider for LC mass spectrometry, will cover all service aspects for the system including installation, warranty provision, preventive maintenance, and troubleshooting. 


In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on GenomeWeb. 

The Scan

CRISPR Screens Reveal Heart Attack-Linked Gene

Researchers in PLOS Genetics have used CRISPR screens to home in on variants associated with coronary artery disease that affect vascular endothelial function.

Meta AI Computer Model Rapidly Predicts Hundreds of Millions of Metagenomic Proteins

Meta AI researchers describe in Science a new large language model that can predict the structures of millions of metagenomic proteins.

Hutch Team Develops Platform for Assessing Impact of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Mutations

The approach described in Cell relies on lentiviral pseudotyping for mutational scanning, which the researchers applied to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

Potential New Therapeutic Target for Rheumatoid Arthritis Discovered

Researchers report in the American Journal of Human Genetics that SNPs implicated in rheumatoid arthritis often regulate the expression of the inflammation-related SPRED2 gene.