CLC bio presents: High-performance bioinformatics without any hassles

CLC bio today announced the release of an innovative product to the scientific community - the CLC Bioinformatics Cell - which will enable users to transform their ordinary Intel- or AMD-based workstation computers to super-computing units. Tasks previously taking two hours can now be computed in one minute - without any hassles.

Nordic Director at Intel, Jörgen Forsberg says: "This product can potentially help pharma and biotech corporations move faster through the phases of drug discovery, and thereby help the pharma industry to develop products faster to meet the healthcare challenges of today."

Senior Scientific Officer at CLC bio, Dr. Jannick Bendtsen adds: "A very important research area of molecular biology today concerns the use of small interfering RNA (siRNA). The design of siRNA relies on database matching to ensure that strong cross-hybridization to non-target genes does not occur. However, due to the small size of siRNA molecules, potential cross-matches can be missed by heuristic algorithms like BLAST. With the speed of the Bioinformatics Cell we are now making it possible to abandon heuristics, and to weed out cross-matching siRNAs, by using Smith-Waterman - the most accurate matching algorithm that exists."

It is commonly accepted throughout the scientific community, that the growth in amounts of data which needs to be computed is growing faster, than the increase in processor speed. This means scientists are craving for alternative ways to have their computing needs met. The CLC Bioinformatics Cell provides this, by accelerating bioinformatics algorithms, such as Smith-Waterman and ClustalW, up to 110 times faster than what a fast desktop computer can handle today.

The Bioinformatics Cell has been developed by CLC bio's world class bioinformatics experts, and they have essentially brought high-performance computing to everybody with this product. This remarkable speed-up is achieved through innovative use of SIMD technology that unleashes already existing power in your computer processor.

A scientist can buy a single unit for his laptop computer - a lab can share a couple among their desktop computers - or - it can be plugged in to each computer in a computer cluster and see the speed-up soar beyond anything available in the market today.

The CLC Bioinformatics Cell works with a simple hassle-free Plug 'n Play concept through CLC bio's intuitive workbench platform, thus eliminating the need for highly specialized consultants. The device is simply plugged in to the USB port of any Intel- or AMD-based computer, be it Mac OS X, Windows or Linux. Command-line execution is also an option, giving the option of integrating the Bioinformatics Cell with existing bioinformatics workflow of scripts and in-house programs.

Version 0.91 of the Bioinformatics Cell is currently supporting the bioinformatics algorithms of Smith-Waterman and ClustalW, with more to come. The acceleration of Smith-Waterman is such, that it can be compared to BLAST, however yielding 100% precise results instead of the imprecise estimates of BLAST, where up to 50% of the results can be missed, as stated in the white paper "High performance computing, using CLC Bioinformatics Cell", available on the article webpage. The CLC Bioinformatics Cell can help researchers and scientists worldwide get better scientific results in less time.