BIOTECHNOLOGY 81
a human exome,” said Stephen Scherer, senior scientist at Te Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, and director of Te Centre for Applied Genomics at the hospital. “With the Ion Proton sequencer, we can capture and sequence the exome in just two days, so there’s no need to batch projects together in a run to keep costs down. Tis is important to customers dealing with clinical research samples who often need their sequence data as quickly as possible.”
“Ion AmpliSeq Exome certified service provider programme makes fast, affordable and high-quality exome sequencing available to any researcher,” said Jain. “Te low amount of required input DNA and the turnkey analysis-to-annotated-results solution provided by Ion Reporter software make this an ideal solution for clinical researchers.”
Sequence alignment DNASTAR has released Lasergene 11.2, its primary focus to incorporate new sequence alignment methods and tools in the MegAlign Pro application.
Lasergene, which has been the most published sequence analysis software in peer reviewed journals for each of the past 28 years, already included a large number of sequence alignment methods. With the release of Lasergene 11.2, DNASTAR
now additionally supports Clustal Omega, Mauve, a fully integrated Muscle alignment algorithm, and enhanced phylogenetic trees.
Tom Schwei, vice president and general manager of DNASTAR, commented, “Lasergene 11.2 introduces significant new capability in DNA and protein sequence alignments. We will continue to develop our software’s capabilities in each of these areas with additional software upgrades beginning early next year. We are very pleased to respond to the needs of the market by maintaining our longstanding tradition of supporting life scientists with continually improving, outstanding, easy to use software.”
In a related development, DNASTAR has also announced that Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick (DMNB) has entered into an agreement supporting an enterprise-wide site license of DNASTAR Lasergene software for genome sequence assembly and analysis. Te license provides access to the DNASTAR software for all faculty, staff and students of DMNB.
Keith Brunt, assistant professor at DMNB, explained: “Until we entered into this agreement, we didn’t have much experience with DNASTAR or their Lasergene
software. Te more time we spent using the software and the more we learned about its capabilities, the more impressed we were with it. Tis software will help in the training of a new generation of physicians and is a step toward patient-tailored therapy. Tis agreement will help support the future success and growth of our programme.”
And Spectronics Corporation has introduced a high quality, inexpensive ultraviolet (UV) crosslinker that makes it possible to identify and analyse trace amounts of DNA/RNA with far greater sensitivity, accuracy and speed than with conventional analysis.
Te Select XLE-Series UV crosslinker covalently binds nucleic acids to membranes in under 30 seconds – 240 times faster than vacuum-oven baking (Fig. 1). It has a novel true- UV-monitoring circuitry that safeguards valuable test results from washouts, even when the tubes age.
Researchers also rely on this instrument for eliminating PCR contamination, nicking ethidium-bromide-stained DNA in agarose gels, gene mapping for creating cleavage- inhibiting thymine dimers, RecA mutation screening in
E.coli, UV sterilisation and miscellaneous UV-dosage applications.
Free software toolkit from Lab7 Systems L
ab7 Systems has released a free software toolkit and new service offerings for the next- generation DNA sequencing (NGS) bioinformatics
community, along with the latest beta version of its Lab7 Dashboard. BioBuilds is a reference collection of Open Source
bioinformatics tools for genomics, pre-built for Linux and Mac OS X platforms. It eliminates the need for users to maintain and build their own versions of these tools. By providing binaries, BioBuilds also enables users easily to reproduce results by removing version dependencies on underlying software, since all tools in BioBuilds will
www.scientistlive.com
be pre-built for those binaries. “Open Source software is important for
bioinformatics,” said Chris Mueller, Lab7 Systems’ president and cto. “However, building and maintaining Open Source tools can be a time consuming process. We maintain internal builds of many analytical tools and we feel that making our builds freely available is a good way to give back to the genomics community.” BioBuilds is being released in conjunction with
the second Public Beta of the Lab7 Dashboard, the company’s comprehensive software platform for managing sequencing projects, workflows, and
pipelines. This release includes the Production Pipeline Engine, a complete sequence analysis pipeline management and report generation system. The Production Pipeline Engine allows users to
easily port existing analysis pipelines into a managed, production-ready environment. All BioBuilds tools are made readily available in the Lab7 Dashboard, even though the platform is not expressly required to run the tools.
Lab7 Systems has also launched its SeqSigma and DashO3 optimisation processes, integral components of the company’s larger suite of custom services.
In another launch, Spectronics describes its Spectrolinker XL- 1000 UV crosslinker as possibly being the biotech researcher’s most versatile instrument.
Te company says its ease of use and unmatched accuracy make the Spectrolinker ideal for many applications including crosslinking of DNA and RNA, DNA, gene mapping, RecA mutation screening and testing, UV-induced polymerisation and UV intensity monitoring.
For researchers, other benefits include the XL-1000’s ‘smart’ microprocessor controller and novel, true UV-monitoring circuitry, which allows users to obtain error-free results faster, safer and more accurately than previously possible. Te Spectrolinker ensures reliable crosslinking in a very quick time by covalently binding nucleic acids to membranes in less than 30 seconds.
Te UV-monitoring circuitry guarantees that the set dosage is always delivered, protecting important test results from washout damage.
Te company adds that the Spectrolinker greatly increases the visibility of samples on autoradiograms, which results in superior analysis and extra-sharp, extremely clear, publication- quality photodocumentation.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92