Thanks for 35 years of support!

October 2019 marks DNASTAR’s 35^th anniversary.

I don’t have official data, but I’m guessing an exceedingly small fraction of software companies can trace their origins back to 1984.

Being in business for 35 years is a huge milestone, one that wouldn’t be possible without the support of tens of thousands of loyal customers. I want to personally thank you as we move forward into another year of exciting developments.

Fun facts about DNASTAR’s early years

1977 – Pre-DNASTAR, the first organism ever sequenced was the 5,386-base bacteriophage PhiX174. Using the same technology, the E. coli genome would have taken 1,000 YEARS to sequence!

1984- DNASTAR was started in a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab and then moved to the homes of its two founders, Dr. Fred Blattner and John Schroeder. The same year, Apple Macintosh became the first successful desktop computer. DNASTAR was there with its first commercial product, offered for Macintosh and DOS.

1993 – Lasergene was offered on Windows just three years after the first stable version of Windows was produced. Since this time, nearly all DNASTAR software has been available on both Mac and Windows.

1997 – E. coli was the seventh and (then) largest genome ever sequenced. This was accomplished by DNASTAR’s founder, Dr. Fred Blattner (Univ. of WI-Madison), using Lasergene. It did NOT take 1,000 years. But it did take longer then the 5 minutes or so required by Lasergene in 2019.

The old photos above show our beginnings, but DNASTAR’s present and future are full of excitement and improvements as we continue to lead in bioinformatics software innovation. Since our founding, our software has been cited in over 72,000 peer-reviewed journal articles and is used by more than 80,000 users worldwide. We owe our success to you–our customers–and we truly appreciate your continued support.

Best,

Matt

Matt Keyser
Senior Manager of Product Development
matthewk@dnastar.com