Integration between the Lasergene applications


The Lasergene applications of SeqBuilder, GeneQuest, PrimerSelect, Protean and MegAlign are able to share the same data by synchronous updating and opening and saving documents in cross-application formats.
Opening and Saving Documents in Cross-application Formats

GeneQuest, SeqBuilder, Protean, MegAlign and PrimerSelect can open project files created by each other. There are three main situations that may occur.
Following are three different situations:

Situation I: Multiple applications simultaneously opening a single sequence file saved in text format. (e.g. Lasergene DNA or protein (.seq or .pro))

Situation II: Applications that open one sequence per project - GeneQuest, SeqBuilder and Protean

Situation III: Applications that can have multiple sequences in a single project - PrimerSelect and MegAlign
Situation I: Multiple applications simultaneously opening a single sequence file saved in text format. (e.g. Lasergene DNA or protein (.seq or .pro))

In GeneQuest, Protean and SeqBuilder, using File-Save would save just the changes in the sequence, features or comments back to the original text file. All other information including methods, layout, etc. will not be saved. To save this additional data into a "project file", File-Save As must be used to save as a GeneQuest document (*.dad), Protean document (*.pad), or a SeqBuilder document (*.sbd) file. Once Save As is used the synchronous updating has ended for that application since it is no longer using the same sequence file, instead it has copied the information from that sequence file while adding project information.

Note: See Situation II below for the recommended way to begin working with a project document in multiple applications.
Situation II: Applications that open one sequence per project - GeneQuest, SeqBuilder and Protean

In Situation I above, we discussed what happens when these three applications open and save a sequence that was originally in text format. However, Situation III refers to these three applications opening any other of Lasergene application's project files, for example, SeqBuilder opening a GeneQuest project file (.dad). If this occurred, then performing a File-Save in SeqBuilder would save information back to the original GeneQuest document, but the information saved would include not only information about GeneQuest methods, but also SeqBuilder layout information. Performing a File-Save would keep the connection between the two applications so that synchronous updating could continue. However, if File-Save As was performed in SeqBuilder, a new document would be created that would contain the sequence information, GeneQuest methods and SeqBuilder layout information, but it would break the connection between GeneQuest and SeqBuilder so that synchronous updating would no longer occur.
Situation III: Applications that can have multiple sequences in a single project - PrimerSelect and MegAlign

Any other file other than the application's own project file (PrimerSelect project (*.pcr) and MegAlign project (*.meg) respectively) will "read in" only the sequence, features and comments portion of any other file. (File-Enter Sequences option is used to indicate this functionality). Therefore, if you started with anything other than the application's project file, File-Save will create only the project file. The text formatted sequence file will not be written over other than by using an Export menu option.