We chatted with Dr. Sheldon Garrison, Director of Pediatric and Rare Diseases at Promentis Pharmaceuticals about his experience with DNASTAR software.

Tell us about your work!
My research has primarily focused on the molecular and cellular biology mechanisms of rare pediatric diseases, neuroinflammatory pain and neuromuscular development. Quantifying mRNA expression levels across a broad range of genes has been a critical component within my projects. I use the Lasergene software to optimize everything from primer selection to analysis of our sequence data. The biggest challenges are linking the species-specific genetic and protein information to various pathways.

How has DNASTAR software helped you?
The Lasergene software has really helped us with our bioinformatic-driven projects. We are constantly exploring both novel drug targets and working to gain a better understanding of current targets of interest. Particularly when working on physiological and pharmacology experiments, we need to have a high degree of confidence in our molecular work. The Lasergene software gives that to us, especially with gene sequence and protein analysis.

What does DNASTAR software do best, in your opinion?
Data analysis, especially with sequence alignment and working with results from the sequencer. I have also come to appreciate the flexibility of the software with primer design. I have also recently started working with Protean 3D and find it to be extremely helpful with understanding poorly published proteins of interest.

Can you speak to DNASTAR’s support for you and your work?
While at the Medical College of Wisconsin I managed a large departmental network because of my familiarity with the program. While things typically ran smoothly, any questions I had were answered same-day, which made my work incredibly easy.