GenVision Pro is a comprehensive browser for single or multiple genomes that enables all scientists to visualize, browse, and compare multiple genome-scale assemblies in an easy to use interface.  It supports analysis of combined workflows (e.g. RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq or CNV and miRNA) to facilitate integrated analysis of important experiments.

NovaDock is a protein-protein docking algorithm that predicts atomic interactions between any two proteins, with results able to be visualized in Lasergene’s Protean 3D application.  NovaDock utilizes the SwarmDock algorithm, which exploits protein flexibility when docking, resulting in more accurate predictions.

NovaFold Antibody is a new application designed to predict antibody structures, identify antibody-antigen binding sites, and, with the use of NovaDock, simulate and display the effects of binding.  NovaFold Antibody was developed in-house at DNASTAR using a broad range of tools to assist antibody researchers.

Lasergene 14 includes a streamlined cloning workflow and the addition of three new cloning methods into DNASTAR software: Gibson Assembly, In-Fusion and GeneArt.  Lasergene now supports seven major virtual cloning approaches and variations of them, allowing scientists to choose from a broad range of popular cloning methods to accomplish their research objectives.

The de novo transcriptome workflow has been enhanced to allow for rRNA contaminant screening and elimination of ribosomal RNA from experimental data.   Adaptor trimming is also supported.  When combined with annotation via the most appropriate RefSeq database, which was introduced in Lasergene 13, the enhanced de novo transcriptome workflow is truly industry leading.

Lasergene users who perform sequencing for clinical research or who perform high throughput sequencing of specific samples often have the need to validate next-generation sequencing results with Sanger assemblies.  In Lasergene 14, scientists can now view NGS and Sanger data within a single project to validate sample results before further proceeding.

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, commented, “Lasergene 14 is a transformative software release.  Biology is becoming increasingly integrated and extended.  Scientists are no longer interested in simply performing one type of experiment on their organism of interest.  They perform multiple experiments and they need software to help them combine the results into an integrated analysis platform.  Lasergene 14 can support scientists by going from DNA sequence to protein structure and beyond, with a broad range of tools for all life scientists.  We are delighted to be able to deliver this robust offering to the market.   We continue to focus on incorporating the highest quality algorithms into our software, whether developed in-house or brought in from leaders in the field.  We look forward to continuing to deliver the most accurate and comprehensive results in our biological software.”

About DNASTAR

DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, (www.DNASTAR.com) is a pioneer in the development and sale of software used to increase life scientists’ productivity using their desktop computer or on the Amazon Cloud.  DNASTAR’s comprehensive software suite, Lasergene, supports molecular biologists, geneticists, and structural biologists in meeting virtually all of their DNA, RNA, and protein sequence needs, including Sanger and next-generation sequence assembly and analysis, protein sequence and structure analysis, protein structure prediction, and protein-protein docking with easy to use, affordable, flexible computer software.

Contact

Tom Schwei
Vice President & General Manager
DNASTAR, Inc.
Telephone:  608-237-3082
U.S. Toll Free:  866-511-5090
toms@dnastar.com

John Timmer Ph.D., the Research Director of Inhibrx commented, “After using Lasergene software in-house to meet our day to day sequence analysis needs, it became clear that a long-term, company-wide site license of the software makes sense for our organization. We have found the software to be easy to use and powerful, and DNASTAR’s technical support has been very responsive and on point. By committing to this license for multiple years, our scientists can count on a consistent, strong platform being available to them throughout their research projects. We look forward to using Lasergene on an increasing basis as we continue to grow our business.”
 

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, stated, “We appreciate the confidence shown by Inhibrx in making this multi-year commitment to using our software as an integral part of their research and business. As a leading-edge firm in developing fit-for-function biotherapeutics, Inhibrx represents a great fit for our software platform, now and into the future. We look forward to supporting the research and business of Inhibrx through ongoing development and delivery of a strong software offering.”

Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.

About DNASTAR
DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, is a pioneer in the development and sale of software used to increase life scientists’ productivity using their desktop computer or on the Amazon Cloud. DNASTAR’s comprehensive software suite, Lasergene, supports molecular biologists, geneticists, and structural biologists in meeting virtually all of their DNA, RNA, and protein sequence needs, including Sanger and next-generation sequence assembly and analysis, protein sequence and structure analysis, and protein structure prediction with easy to use, affordable, flexible computer software.

Contact
Tom Schwei

VP & General Manager

DNASTAR, Inc.

Telephone: 608-237-3082

U.S. Toll Free: 866-511-5090

toms@dnastar.com

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, commented, “Lasergene 13 truly has something for everybody. In designing this release, we wanted to ensure we supported our Next-Generation Sequencing customers, who continue to explore new domains in their research. With the recent growth in RNA-based sequencing, we decided to put a strong emphasis on RNA into Lasergene 13. We also wanted to ensure we supported human clinical researchers with advanced capability. Finally, we included in Lasergene 13 improvements that will appeal to scientists who work with bacteria and those who perform more traditional sequence analysis.

“Lasergene 13 helps scientists improve their research, regardless of the type of work they are doing, which is and has been our continuing goal as a company. We continue to take maximum advantage of our patented algorithms and unique best practices to solve some of the most difficult problems facing scientists today and we look forward to continuing to do so in future Lasergene releases, as well.”

About DNASTAR

DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, (www.DNASTAR.com) is a pioneer in the development and sale of software used to increase life scientists’ productivity using their desktop computer or on the Amazon Cloud. DNASTAR’s comprehensive software suite, Lasergene, supports molecular biologists, geneticists, and structural biologists in meeting virtually all of their DNA, RNA, and protein sequence needs, including Sanger and next-generation sequence assembly and analysis, protein sequence and structure analysis, and protein structure prediction with easy to use, affordable, flexible computer software.

As we close in on the end of 2015, it is worthwhile to look back and review what’s been accomplished this past year. This can help us to appreciate how far we’ve come in some areas, but it also gives us some perspective on plans for 2016. So, being a financial person by background, I thought I’d look back at 2015 at DNASTAR – by the numbers.

50,000 – During 2015, DNASTAR surpassed 50,000 peer-reviewed publications in which our software was cited by our customers. We are humbled by this number but gratified that so many people found our software useful to them in their work to use it and cite it in their publications.

100 – A few months ago, I wrote about DNASTAR surpassing 100 blog posts. We continue to find interesting topics to write about and we hope you continue to enjoy our offerings. Please let us know your thoughts about our blog and any suggestions you have for topics you’d like to see included in the future.

51 – The number of Lasergene Weekly newsletters we issued in 2015. We desire to keep you informed of what’s new at DNASTAR every week. If you aren’t currently receiving our newsletter, join our mailing list now to begin to receive it.

31 – Years in business. We started in 1984 and we have continued going strong since that time, developing state of the art software for molecular biologists and, more recently, structural biologists. More on both of those topics a bit later.

22 – Quick Tips videos released this year, in a brand new section of our blog. All of these videos cover an important molecular biology, genomics or structural biology topic and show how to use our software to accomplish your objectives in one minute or less. While not exhaustive, they should give you a good start on a variety of important workflows.

10 – Hour-long webinars we held in 2015, including three at various BioConference Live virtual conferences and seven that we sponsored and hosted ourselves. See recordings of our recent webinars here. These webinars do a deep dive on one or more topics to give you an in-depth discussion of how to accomplish your research objectives using our software.

#1 – We did a thorough comparison of our software to open source software and other genomics software providers. We can clearly say that we are #1 in accuracy for next-generation sequencing exome alignment and variant calling. And our software is on average 3X faster than all the others.  See the full results.

#1 – During 2015, we supplemented NovaFold structure prediction software on the cloud with the release of NovaFold local for ground computer installation.  It remains the #1 protein structure prediction software on the planet, according to the past five CASP competitions rating I-TASSER, on which NovaFold is based.  Read more about it here.

2016 – We are proud of what we accomplished in 2015 and we thank you for your continued support of DNASTAR.  Without you, none of this means anything. So, what’s in store for 2016? Stay tuned. Some exciting things are about to happen…

Happy new year, everyone. More to come soon!

Well, that recently happened when Apple released El Capitan, OS X 10.11.  Despite significant prior planning and testing, the actual release of El Capitan broke numerous critical things in many software applications globally.  I’d like to share some of the behind the scenes work that we do when Microsoft or Apple release major operating system updates to help you understand the effort we at DNASTAR make and the measures we take to ensure your Lasergene software can continue performing effectively, regardless of operating system changes.

About six months before a major operating system is released, the software development community is given early access to the new OS.   Along with hundreds or even thousands of other companies, we do extensive testing of our software on the new OS and report any issues that arise to Apple or Microsoft. This is an important part of the release process.  If Apple or Microsoft were to release a new operating system that is incompatible with the programs that are designed to run on it, then the new system would not be popular or effective.

In the case of El Capitan, beginning last spring, DNASTAR received numerous early access versions from Apple, none of which revealed any incompatibility with our Lasergene software.  On September 10, 2015, Apple released their Golden Master, the final pre-release version of El Capitan.  Upon receipt of the Golden Master, we again tested our software and quickly identified numerous major problems, none of which had existed in prior versions of the OS.  In certain Lasergene applications, files could not be opened, saved or closed.   And there were other issues.  We reported these matters to Apple and suggested that Apple modify El Capitan before release to address the problems.  After all, we assumed that other software programs were having similar difficulties (and we now know, of course, that they are).  Apple stayed on course with their release of El Capitan on September 30, unmodified, even with major known problems for Lasergene and many other software programs.

In this situation, we did the only things we could do.  We immediately identified the root causes in our software that make it incompatible with this new operating system and we modified our software code to accommodate the new Apple OS.  Had the system worked as it was intended, we would have had many months to address these issues.  However, since the first indication of problems arose less than three weeks before Apple’s release, we did everything possible to address the issues as quickly as possible.  As a result, we published a product notification prior to the release of El Capitan.  We use product notifications to let our customers know about situations like this one.  We also worked hard on creating a “patch” release that would address the underlying problems that cause the incompatibility.  The patch was released on October 13, 2015, less than two weeks after Apple released El Capitan.  It is Lasergene 12.3.2 and it is available to current customers here.

It is not our goal to blame Apple for this issue.  Instead, we wanted you to know a bit more about how these things normally play out and what we at DNASTAR do to help you continuously meet your research needs, even when things don’t go according to plan.  We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this situation and we hope your research did not suffer if you chose to upgrade to Apple’s new operating system in the past few weeks.  If you have upgraded to El Capitan, please be sure to update your DNASTAR software to Lasergene 12.3.2.  If you reached out to us to discuss this issue, we hope and trust that you were treated well by our technical support team.

I am always interested in hearing from you; whether it’s to compliment our team or to help us understand areas in which we can improve.  Thank you for being a loyal customer of DNASTAR.  We look forward to continuing to meet your research needs in the future.

Shakoor Malik, the Technical & Marketing Director of Pure health commented, “We are excited to begin this new relationship with DNASTAR.  Their 30-year history of meeting the needs of life scientists by offering a broad range of DNA, RNA and protein sequence analysis software and their reputation for providing high quality software and service fit extremely well with our mission and capabilities.  We look forward to meeting the needs of commercial, industrial, government and academic customers in the Middle East who want to use the best sequence analysis software available.”

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, said, “Purehealth is an outstanding partner for DNASTAR, given their reputation for delivering outstanding products, services and support to their customers and their focus on human health.  The timing of this relationship is ideal, given DNASTAR’s growing focus on supporting the needs of molecular biologists and structural biologists in their human health research efforts.  We are delighted to work with this strong team to help meet the sequence analysis software needs of life science researchers in the Middle East.”

About DNASTAR

DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, is a pioneer in the development and sale of software used to increase life scientists’ productivity using their desktop computers, internal servers or on the Amazon Cloud.  DNASTAR’s comprehensive software suite, Lasergene, supports molecular biologists, geneticists, and structural biologists in meeting virtually all of their DNA, RNA, and protein sequence needs, including Sanger and next-generation sequence assembly and analysis, protein sequence and structure analysis, and protein structure prediction with easy to use, affordable, flexible computer software.

Contact

Tom Schwei
Vice President & General Manager
DNASTAR, Inc.
Telephone:  608-237-3082
U.S. Toll Free:  866-511-5090
toms@dnastar.com

About Pure Health Medical Supplies

Pure Health Medical Supplies Trading Company, FZE is a premier medical diagnostic company specializing in molecular biology providing state of the art products  for Multiplex PCR, Target Sequencing ,Genetics, Pharmacogenetics, Personalised Medicine, Women’s Health and Infectious Diseases.

The company has issued a series of white papers discussing the results and the approach of each comparison as well as a comprehensive white paper comparing data from all tested software.

All results are accessible here.

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, said, “DNASTAR has been known for many things in our time supporting scientists in achieving their research goals, including having software that is innovative, easy to use, affordable, and well supported. However, the most important attribute of any software tool is its accuracy. This series of comparisons reveals that DNASTAR software is the most accurate software for aligning NGS data and calling variants. We are very pleased with this result, which is a great foundation upon which to add more functionality as we continue to meet the needs of biologists globally.”

About DNASTAR

DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, (www.DNASTAR.com) is a pioneer in the development and sale of software used to increase life scientists’ productivity using their desktop computer or on the Amazon Cloud. DNASTAR’s comprehensive software suite, Lasergene, supports molecular biologists, geneticists, and structural biologists in meeting virtually all of their DNA, RNA, and protein sequence needs, including Sanger and next-generation sequence assembly and analysis, protein sequence and structure analysis, and protein structure prediction, with easy to use, affordable, flexible computer software.

Contact

Tom Schwei
Vice President & General Manager
DNASTAR, Inc.
Telephone:  608-237-3082
U.S. Toll Free:  866-511-5090
toms@dnastar.com

People who live to be 100 years old (centenarians) are generally considered to have accomplished something significant. One hundred years is a century, which is a major demarcation point for many of us, and the Roman numeral “C” represents 100.

One hundred is also a nice round number. For money, 100 pennies equals one dollar. One hundred degrees Celsius is water’s boiling point. The decimal system is based on 100 (well, it is really based on 10, but 10 X 10 equals 100). In fact, the place value system was developed in India in 100 BC (of course, they didn’t know it was 100 BC at the time).

One hundred is a key number in sports, too. The 100-yard or 100-meter dash is a race that arguably determines the fastest human. The highest number of points ever scored in an NBA basketball game is 100 – by Wilt Chamberlain in 1962.  And the world record for hula hooping is 100 hula hoops at one time by a girl from Australia in 2005.

Historically, 100 years ago, Britain, France and Russia began secret talks to divide the Ottoman Empire. And let’s not forget the 100 Years War between England and France that began in 1336.

Interestingly, the sum of the first nine prime numbers is 100 (there is probably a mathematical reason that’s the case). And scientifically, number 100 on the Periodic Table of Elements is fermium, a rare radioactive earth metal. One more scientific convention in the field of biology is that polypeptides of 100 or more amino acids are commonly called proteins.

While these facts all may be of interest, you might be asking – why the interest in the number 100? Well, I’ll tell you.

As part of DNASTAR’s evolving communication efforts, we began a blog as part of our website in September 2014, less than one year ago.  Last week, we published our 100th blog post. This tribute to the number 100 is my way of thanking you, our customers and friends, for your support of our blog and of our business. Without you, we’d have nothing to talk about. We are thankful for your ongoing support of everything we do and we look forward to continuing to serve you well for many years to come – maybe 100?

A few last odd facts about the number 100 – by the age of 66, most people will have shed 100 pounds of skin. The average hippo weighs 100 pounds at birth. And Eskimos have more than 100 words for ice.

I hope to write again, soon, maybe about the number 1,000!

Luis Borrego, Biotech del Norte’s New Business and Innovation Manager, commented, “We are excited to partner with DNASTAR, known as a leader in Next Generation Sequencing software  and data analysis. Their 30 years of expertise, extensive knowledge, and high quality software are a great addition to our company and the product lines we offer.”

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, said, “Biotech del Norte is an outstanding partner for DNASTAR, given the breadth of their product line and their reputation for delivering outstanding products, services and support to their customers. The DNASTAR product line represents a nice complement to their existing products, which will allow them to meet the needs of sequencing customers even more effectively than before. We are delighted to work with this strong team of scientists to help meet the sequencing market needs in Mexico.”

About DNASTAR

DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, is a pioneer in the development and sale of software used to increase life scientists’ productivity using their desktop computer, internal servers or on the Amazon Cloud. DNASTAR’s comprehensive software suite, Lasergene, supports molecular biologists, geneticists, and structural biologists in meeting virtually all of their DNA, RNA, and protein sequence needs, including Sanger and next-generation sequence assembly and analysis, protein sequence and structure analysis, and protein structure prediction with easy to use, affordable, flexible computer software.

Contact

Tom Schwei
Vice President & General Manager
DNASTAR, Inc.
Telephone:  608-237-3082
U.S. Toll Free:  866-511-5090
toms@dnastar.com

About Biotech del Norte

Biotech del Norte S.A.P.I. de C.V., Monterrey N.L., Mexico, (www.biotechdelnorte.com) is a Mexican distributor specialized in molecular biology and sequencing applications supporting scientists and investigators with brands such as Illumina, DNASTAR, PCRMAX, and Biotecon. Biotech Del Norte also provides consulting services for specialized projects. BDN has more than eight years of experience in the Mexican market and three locations: Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara.

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, said, “NovaFold 12.3 represents a strong step forward in the structure prediction domain. By providing a fully flexible software program, DNASTAR is making the world’s best protein folding software available to all scientists wherever and whenever they need it.  We appreciate the I-TASSER foundation on which NovaFold has been built and the strong reputation of Dr. Yang Zhang and the University of Michigan in developing award winning software.  Combined with DNASTAR’s commercialization capabilities, we have built a winning team for developing and delivering outstanding protein structure prediction software to all scientists globally.”

About DNASTAR

DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, is a pioneer in the development and sale of software used to increase life scientists’ productivity using their desktop computer, internal servers or on the Amazon Cloud.  DNASTAR’s comprehensive software suite, Lasergene, and NovaFold support molecular biologists, geneticists, and structural biologists in meeting virtually all of their DNA, RNA, and protein sequence needs, including Sanger and next-generation sequence assembly and analysis, protein sequence and structure analysis, and protein structure prediction with easy to use, affordable, flexible computer software.

Contact

Tom Schwei
Vice President & General Manager
DNASTAR, Inc.
Telephone:  608-237-3082
U.S. Toll Free:  866-511-5090
toms@dnastar.com