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On Thursday, as digital connectivity expands across the globe and transforms how society interacts with technology, BlackRock announced the launch of the iShares Cloud and 5G Multisector ETF (NYSE: IDAT). IDAT seeks to track the investment results of the Morningstar® Global Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity Index.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As digital connectivity expands across the globe and transforms the way society interacts with technology, today BlackRock announces the launch of the iShares Cloud and 5G Multisector ETF (NYSE: IDAT). IDAT seeks to track the investment results of the Morningstar® Global Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity Index. Morningstar’s forward-looking index uses fundamental Morningstar research to assess the 50 global firms across developed and emerging markets that have the potential to drive material net profit increases from infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) tools and/or 5G next-generation connectivity. The Megatrends opportunity and the trajectory of the global economy “With the recent acceleration of technological innovations to meet work-from-home demands, the explosion of e-commerce and revolutionary healthcare advances, the future has become the present,” said Chad Slawner, Head of US iShares Product. “The expansion of the iShares Megatrend lineup signals investor demand for precise access to strategies that go beyond traditional sector, market capitalization and geographic classifications.” BlackRock believes there are five Megatrends primed to redefine every corner our lives over the next decade or two, momentum indicative of an investment horizon that transcends market cycles: Technological Breakthroughs; Demographics and Social Change; Rapid Urbanization; Climate Change and Resource Scarcity; and Emerging Global Wealth. The convergence of 5G and Cloud emerges as an investment theme The Infrastructure for the 21st century represents significant economic opportunity. IDAT concentrates on the handful of firms that the Morningstar’s Equity Research team believes are best positioned from the evolution of IaaS and 5G technologies that are driving the planet’s digital transformation. “5G and cloud infrastructure participate in a virtuous cycle. Broader 5G connectivity leads to faster download speeds and the commercialization of technologies like autonomous driving and surgical robots – solutions which will create a surge of data creation and lead to increased demand for cloud-based data storage,” said Jeff Spiegel, Head of U.S. iShares Megatrend and International ETFs. “IDAT is an example of the critical tech-enabled innovation – in this case, the companies leading the race of delivering digital infrastructure – happening within key corners of equity markets.” The iShares Megatrends lineup of BlackRock Megatrend traditional index ETFs and active transparent ETFs aims to provide all kinds of investors with choices when accessing BlackRock’s best thinking on transformative growth trends. For more information, please visit www.ishares.com/megatrends. About BlackRock BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/corporate | Twitter: @blackrock | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/blackrock About iShares iShares unlocks opportunity across markets to meet the evolving needs of investors. With more than twenty years of experience, a global line-up of 900+ exchange traded funds (ETFs) and $2.81 trillion in assets under management as of March 31, 2021, iShares continues to drive progress for the financial industry. iShares funds are powered by the expert portfolio and risk management of BlackRock. Carefully consider the Funds' investment objectives, risk factors, and charges and expenses before investing. This and other information can be found in the Funds' prospectuses or, if available, the summary prospectuses which may be obtained by visiting www.iShares.com or www.blackrock.com. Read the prospectus carefully before investing. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. International investing involves risks, including risks related to foreign currency, limited liquidity, less government regulation and the possibility of substantial volatility due to adverse political, economic or other developments. These risks often are heightened for investments in emerging/developing markets and in concentrations of single countries. Funds that concentrate investments in specific industries, sectors, markets or asset classes may underperform or be more volatile than other industries, sectors, markets or asset classes and the general securities market. Technologies perceived to displace older technologies or create new markets may not in fact do so. Companies that initially develop a novel technology may not be able to capitalize on the technology. This information should not be relied upon as research, investment advice, or a recommendation regarding any products, strategies, or any security in particular. This material is strictly for illustrative, educational, or informational purposes and is subject to change. The iShares Funds are not sponsored, endorsed, issued, sold or promoted by Morningstar, Inc., nor does this company make any representation regarding the advisability of investing in the Funds. BlackRock is not affiliated with Morningstar, Inc. The iShares and BlackRock Funds are distributed by BlackRock Investments, LLC (together with its affiliates, “BlackRock”). ©2021 BlackRock, Inc. All rights reserved. iSHARES and BLACKROCK are trademarks of BlackRock, Inc., or its subsidiaries in the United States and elsewhere. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bruker Corporation and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) today announced a collaboration to develop and distribute new structural biology methods and tools to integrate Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). The goal of this collaboration is to develop a set of integrated SAXS and NMR data analysis algorithms for determining the structures of larger multi-domain proteins and protein complexes with DNA, RNA or other proteins. Such multi-modality approaches based on complementary analytical technologies play a key role in helping researchers answer increasingly complex questions in structural biology and drug development, and hold the potential for advancements in clinical research applications. Traditional NMR three-dimensional (3D) atomic structure determination of the individual protein domains will be combined and integrated with the determination of overall size, shape and envelope constraints provided by SAXS. This approach will yield more accurate structures of larger multi-domain proteins and complexes under near-native solution conditions than what can be solved currently by NMR alone. Importantly, the integrated NMR and SAXS approach has been shown to help in the elucidation of important functional information about intrinsically flexible, unstructured, or partially unfolded domains. “Hybrid methods are going to be essential for solving structures of larger biomolecules and biomolecular complexes,” stated Dr. John Markley, Steenbock Professor of Biomolecular Structure, and Head of the National Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison (NMRFAM) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Protein structure determination is crucial for a broad range of applications from fundamental biological research to next-generation drug development. High magnetic field NMR is unique in its capability to study the detailed structure and dynamics of proteins in solution, the native environment of many proteins. This allows NMR to elucidate the structures of proteins with flexible domains or multiple configurations, features that are often not directly accessible with static techniques such as crystallography or electron microscopy. However, typical NMR structures are not as accurate as the best protein structures from X-ray crystallography, and currently the use of NMR for protein structure determination in solution has its upper size limits typically near 50–70 kDa proteins. Approaching this limit already requires the use of all modern NMR techniques, such as ultra-high field 800-1000 MHz magnets, isotopic labeling schemes, advanced pulse sequences and NMR electronics, and highest sensitivity CryoProbes™. Even with all these capabilities, solution NMR often lacks the ability to determine the exact global structure of larger molecular assemblies or multi-domain proteins. NMR has significant advantages in that it can study proteins in solution near native physiological conditions, can obtain dynamic information for different regions and domains of a protein, and allow access to functionally very important information on protein flexibility, intrinsically unstructured regions, partial protein folding, and in some cases multiple accessible protein conformations. Solution-structure determination by NMR uses interatomic distances determined from the Nuclear Overhauser Effect (NOE) and torsion angles determined from Residual Dipolar Coupling (RDC). In theory, a complete set of NMR measurements can be used to uniquely determine the structures of labeled proteins. However, in practice many NMR measurements provide sparse RDC datasets that cannot be used to uniquely determine a structure, especially for larger proteins. SAXS is an ideal complementary technique that can efficiently and effectively compensate incomplete NMR datasets of biological macromolecules. It has been shown by a number of researchers that SAXS data can improve the quality and accuracy of NMR structures and also potentially extends the capability of NMR to larger macromolecules (e.g., J. Wang et al., “Determination of multi-component protein structures in solution using global orientation and shape restraints*”). “NMR and SAXS provide truly complementary data: detailed local conformations are derived from NMR and global shape from SAXS. Thus, they naturally go together,” said Dr. Angela Gronenborn, Head of the Department of Structural Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and holder of the UPMC Rosalind Franklin Chair. An experimental SAXS data set consists of intensities measured at varying scattering angles. Each measured SAXS intensity represents the mathematical transform of the protein’s pair-distance distribution function, i.e. a set of all distances internal to the protein. SAXS can therefore provide a complete global snapshot of the protein in solution that can be used as a constraint to resolve ambiguities during the determination of a protein structure by NMR, or SAXS data can help discriminate between similar structural conformations. SAXS is an attractive adjunct to NMR because the experiment is relatively fast, economical and straightforward: it requires no sophisticated sample preparation, data can be acquired fully automatically with only a few micrograms of unlabeled, native protein in a monodisperse solution, and Bruker offers powerful and highly automated SAXS laboratory systems for structural biologists who do not have access to a dedicated synchrotron beamline. A complete SAXS dataset can typically be acquired in hours in the homelab, or in minutes at a beamline, without any significant difference in ultimate data quality or information content, and there is a growing set of powerful tools for SAXS data interpretation, for example the ATSAS suite from the EMBL†. Leading the Bruker-Berkeley Lab structural biology collaboration project will be Professor John Tainer from the Scripps Research Institute and Dr. Robert Rambo of Berkeley Lab, both internationally recognized for their development of advanced techniques for SAXS analysis of macromolecules at the SIBYLS beamline at the Advanced Light Source of Berkeley Laboratory. Professor Tainer commented: “We are excited to work with Bruker to develop powerful new tools for the structural analysis of biological macromolecules. The unique combination of NMR and SAXS expertise at Bruker and LBNL will provide an ideal environment for the development of enhanced capabilities for integrated NMR and SAXS structural analyses.” This work will be supported by Bruker Corporation under contract WF008609 and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) program Integrated Diffraction Analysis Technologies (IDAT) under contract DE-AC02-05CH11231. *J. Wang, X. Zuo, P. Yu, I-J, Byeon, J. Jung, X. Wang, M. Dyba, S. Seifert, C.D. Schwieters, J. Qin, A. Gronenborn and Y-X Wang, J. A. Chem. Soc., 2009, 131(30), 10507-10515. ** http://www.bruker-axs.de/fileadmin/user_upload/KJR_Files/Bruker_AXS_BioSAXS_Webinar.pdf †D. Franke , D.I Svergun, J. Appl. Cryst., 2009, 42, 342-346. About Bruker Corporation: Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ: BRKR) is a leading provider of high-performance scientific instruments and solutions for molecular and materials research, as well as for industrial and applied analysis. For more information, please visit www.bruker.com. About Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most pressing scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 12 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov/. Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=50063745&lang=en