Peaks of Interest

Bruker Daltonics and German agency announce collaboration

Bruker BioSciences Corporation (Billerica, Massachusetts) and the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ, Braunschweig, Germany) announced a collaboration for the identification and classification of microorganisms from peptide and protein profiles measured by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The DSMZ uses Bruker Daltonics' CLINPROT BioTyper system to generate protein profiles and to perform the required data analysis.

The DSMZ is the German National Resource Centre for Biological Material, and currently stores and maintains approximately 14,000 cultures, representing 6900 species from different types of microorganisms, including archaea, bacteria, yeasts, and fungi. In the collaboration, a database will be generated that will include species and strains for many different application areas such as microbiological classification, clinical and diagnostic infectious disease research, as well as environmental analysis, food safety, and water quality.

Applied Biosystems completes acquisition of division of Ambion

Applied Biosystems Group (Foster City, California) has completed its acquisition of the Research Products Division of Ambion (Austin, Texas).

Applied Biosystems will continue to deliver the products, services, and support for both Applied Biosystems and Ambion.

Applied Biosystems' product portfolio combined with Ambion's broad range of RNA products allows the company to offer complete solutions for application workflows.

PerkinElmer Acquires Agilix Proteomics Technique

PerkinElmer (Shelton, Connecticut) recently announced their acquisition of Agilix Corporation's (Woodbridge, Connecticut) proprietary protein labeling technique that uses isobaric mass tags to simultaneously quantify expressed proteins from multiple samples.

This technique brings quantitative proteomics to PerkinElmer customers in drug discovery and proteomics research. It provides a method for enhancing the utility of mass spectrometry for proteomic analysis.

Waters acquires VICAM

Waters Corporation (Milford, Massachusetts) announced that it has purchased the food safety technology business and associated net assets of VICAM (Watertown, Massachusetts) for undisclosed terms.

According to the Annual Report of the European Commissions' Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed, the largest number of Information Notifications by identified risk in 2004 was for mycotoxin contamination in food imported to, or grown within, the European Union. VICAM's proprietary products employ monoclonal antibodies that are highly specific for certain mycotoxins in a sample.