DNASTAR » Press Releases

DNASTAR Releases Lasergene 14.1 Software With Major Enhancements

Anne Stover — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 20:42:19 +0000

MADISON, Wisconsin – March 3, 2017 – DNASTAR® announced the release of Lasergene 14.1 today, which includes a broad range of improvements in DNA, RNA and protein sequence and structure prediction and analysis. The current release includes improvements to each of the major software platforms in Lasergene – Molecular Biology, Genomics and Structural Biology – to continue to make research easier and more effective for all life scientists.

Automated plasmid annotation is the key improvement added to the Lasergene Molecular Biology Suite, enabling automated annotation of plasmids from DNASTAR’s proprietary, curated sequence database. Not only are annotations more accurate, but hundreds or thousands can be done simultaneously and quickly.

The Lasergene Genomics Suite now includes advanced mRNA isoform analysis via Sashimi plots. Also included in Lasergene 14.1 are enhanced integration and visualization of sets between applications, updated databases, and integration with PowerPoint for advanced editing in presentations.

The Lasergene Structural Biology Suite includes feature annotation within Protean 3D for more robust protein analysis. In addition, NovaFold, the leading structure prediction software, is now available on the cloud for individual protein folding experiments.

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, commented, “Lasergene 14.1 builds on a strong software foundation to provide enhancements most sought by molecular and structural biologists. Based on the most accurate software on the market, we have continued to add capabilities to support the strongest analysis possible for all life scientists. We are delighted to release Lasergene 14.1 so quickly after the powerful Lasergene 14 release last fall. 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

DNASTAR Releases Lasergene 14 Software Including Three New Applications

Tom Schwei — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:08:25 +0000

MADISON, Wisconsin – September 30, 2016 – DNASTAR^® announced the release of Lasergene 14 today, which includes a broad range of improvements in DNA, RNA and protein sequence and structure prediction and analysis. Lasergene 14 includes three brand new applications: GenVision Pro, a comprehensive genome browser; NovaDock, a protein-protein docking application; and NovaFold Antibody, a specific antibody structure prediction program. Also included in this release are major enhancements to virtual cloning, including the addition of three new cloning methods, newly integrated combined Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) workflows, enhancements to the de novo transcriptome workflow introduced with Lasergene 13, and a workflow in support of Sanger validation of NGS data.

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

Inhibrx Adopts DNASTAR Lasergene Software

Tom Schwei — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 19:10:52 +0000

DNASTAR today announced that Inhibrx has entered into an agreement supporting an organization-wide site license of DNASTAR Lasergene software. This license provides access to DNASTAR software for all employees of Inhibrx.

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

DNASTAR Releases Lasergene 13 Software to Enhance RNA Research

Tom Schwei — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:24:44 +0000

DNASTAR announced the release of Lasergene 13 today, which significantly advances scientists’ ability to perform RNA research on model and non-model organisms on standard desktop computers. Significant software enhancements include the ability to perform de novo transcriptome assembly of RNA data for any size project on a desktop computer, automatic mRNA annotation from one or more RefSeq databases selected by the researcher, creation of one or more transcript templates for gene expression analyses, and a complete RNA-Seq gene expression workflow, including strong visualization and analysis capability.
In addition, Lasergene 13 offers improved capabilities for scientists using other types of data, including access to a human Variant Annotation Database to support functional analysis of mutations, automated annotation mapping between microbial genomes, and enhanced template searching capabilities in support of NovaFold, the company’s protein structure prediction application.

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.

DNASTAR Appoints Pure Health Medical Supplies as Middle East Distributor

Tom Schwei — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 16:14:52 +0000

DNASTAR has appointed Pure Health Medical Supplies Trading Company FZE (Purehealth) as a distributor of its molecular biology software in the Middle East, effective immediately. Purehealth is a company that provides a broad range of products and services to improve human health. With headquarters in Dubai, Purehealth serves customers and will represent DNASTAR in Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

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.

DNASTAR Software Identified as Most Accurate NGS Aligner and Variant Caller

Tom Schwei — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 18:02:14 +0000

MADISON, Wisconsin – September 17, 2015 – An exhaustive comparison of next generation sequencing (NGS) aligners and variant callers across a wide range of samples indicates that the DNASTAR software achieves the highest accuracy. Comparisons were made with other commercial software from CLC Bio and Biomatters as well as with the open-source BWA and GATK pipeline. The results from all studies and comparisons are the same – DNASTAR software achieves the highest sensitivity, identifies the fewest false positives, and performs the fastest processing of data.

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

DNASTAR Appoints Biotech Del Norte Mexico as Distributor

Tom Schwei — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 15:52:52 +0000

DNASTAR has appointed Biotech del Norte as a distributor of its DNA, RNA and protein sequence analysis software in Mexico, effective immediately. Biotech del Norte is a company meeting the life science needs of researchers throughout Mexico by providing a wide range of products and services related to DNA sequencing and similar fields.

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.

DNASTAR NovaFold 12.3 Structure Prediction Software Released

Tom Schwei — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 15:00:25 +0000

MADISON, Wisconsin – July 23, 2015 – DNASTAR announced the release of NovaFold 12.3 today, with significant enhancements to the world-leading NovaFold protein structure prediction software. Based on I-TASSER, the software that has won the Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP) competition for the past 10 years, NovaFold 12.3 can be run internally or on the Amazon cloud, predict structures for proteins of virtually any size, and allows users to incorporate custom model templates to enhance prediction results.

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

DNASTAR Lasergene 12.2 Software Achieves High Accuracy

Tom Schwei — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 14:30:55 +0000

MADISON, Wisconsin – February 6, 2015 – DNASTAR^® announced the release of Lasergene 12.2 today, with significant improvements in the accuracy of next-generation sequence assembly and variant calling. The company issued a white paper comparing results of its exome and gene panel sequence assembly and variant calling capabilities with a leading open-source software offering. The results of the white paper indicate that DNASTAR’s software achieves higher accuracy, is faster, and is easier to set up and use.

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, said, “Lasergene 12.2 helps DNASTAR achieve the goal of having the most accurate sequence assembly and variant calling software on the market. Last year, we began using data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create a validation pipeline in our software. In addition to making this pipeline broadly available in the Lasergene 12 software that we released last summer, we used the pipeline internally to help us develop the most accurate next-generation sequence assembly and variant calling software possible. With the release of Lasergene 12.2, the scientific community now has access to highly accurate, fast, easy to use software. As good as this product is, we won’t stop testing, evaluating and fine tuning our algorithms until we have proven that we have the best software for assembling all data types in virtually all situations.”

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

DNASTAR Appoints Tom Lynch Vice President of Sales

Tom Schwei — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 16:56:18 +0000

MADISON, Wisconsin – January 20, 2015 – DNASTAR announced today that Dr. Thomas Lynch will return to the company as Vice President of Sales. Dr. Lynch was a member of DNASTAR’s team of Technical Sales Scientists prior to 2011 and, in the four years since, Dr. Lynch led sales and business development at Aldevron, most recently serving as Director of Client Relations. While there, Dr. Lynch played key roles in the successful launch of Aldevron’s recombinant protein business and in the growth of their plasmid and antibody businesses. Dr. Lynch rejoins DNASTAR to lead the company’s global sales team.

Dr. Lynch commented, “I am very excited to be back with my colleagues at DNASTAR and to work with our customers again. Early in my career, DNASTAR provided me a great opportunity to move from the lab into a commercialization role, which was a great fit for both the company and me. After gaining additional experience outside of DNASTAR, I am delighted to be back helping the company grow while continuing to provide excellent customer service and products. DNASTAR makes great software for genomics, structural biology, and related areas, and the company is exceptionally well positioned for accelerated growth in these markets. As I’ve shared the news throughout my professional network, feedback has been 100% positive, which is no surprise given the strong reputation DNASTAR has.”

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, stated, “We are delighted to have Tom rejoining the company in this newly created role. Tom brings strength in a wide range of disciplines, including protein, structural biology, genomics and similar fields. In addition, he has the highest degree of respect from his contacts in the market due to the high quality of the work he has done throughout his career. We are excited about this next chapter for DNASTAR and we look forward to continuing to meet the needs of the molecular biology market in the best possible manner.”

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 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