DNASTAR Releases Lasergene 9 Major Software Upgrade

DNASTAR® announced the release of Lasergene 9 today providing a major upgrade to its flagship desktop software suite for molecular biologists. The new release brings together all of DNASTAR’s separate software components into one integrated software package, including: (1) Lasergene Navigator, (2) Lasergene Core Suite, (3) SeqMan NGen, (4) ArrayStar, (5) QSeq, (6) GenVision, and (7) DNASTAR’s newest application, Protean 3D.

Lasergene 9 is the culmination of work in a wide variety of scientific domains over the past year and it represents a major step forward in sequence assembly and analysis software capabilities.

With Lasergene 9’s Navigator, DNASTAR adds a workflow environment that makes it easier than ever for users to identify and access all the applications needed for their work. Lasergene contains within it hundreds of software tools a molecular biologist might need. A few examples are virtual cloning, primer design, sequence assembly, pair-wise and multiple sequence alignments, gene finding, sequence editing, annotation, plasmid map creation, genome mapping, protein analysis, microarray alignment and analysis, and next generation sequence assembly and analysis. Navigator provides convenient ready access to all DNASTAR applications, with integrated help, wizards to set parameters of various workflows, and web access to DNASTAR’s customer support team, product videos and more.

SeqMan Pro with NGen offers superb performance and ease of use in sequence assembly. Bacterial genomes are routinely assembled in less than a minute and today’s deep templated next-gen human genome assemblies can be fully assembled in less than 24 hours on an ordinary desktop computer costing less than $2,500 from Dell, Apple and similar popular hardware vendors. SeqMan Pro now supports the BAM file format and includes statistically calculated SNPs and genotyping data from virtually any size templated assembly project for visualization on a desktop computer.

The new integration of Lasergene 9 also includes ArrayStar, DNASTAR’s microarray analysis software that can also be used with QSeq, the next generation sequencing technology for quantifying gene expression, chromatin protection and similar applications.

GenVision, DNASTAR’s data integration/presentation software has also been added as a component of Lasergene 9.

Protean 3D is the newest application addition to Lasergene 9. This new proteomics software is useful for exploring macromolecular structure, motion, and function. Its design is specifically focused on showing the motions and shape changes that proteins undergo as they carry out their work. A Motion Library is included with more than 300 proteins for which motion data is available for macromolecular conformational changes.

Dr. Fred Blattner, Founder, President and CEO of DNASTAR, commented, “With Lasergene 9, we have taken a major step in making Lasergene easier to use for the next generation of molecular biologists while introducing several major advances in the technology behind the interface. I’m very proud of the people who have worked hard over the past 27 years building this business as well as the people who have labored brilliantly and persistently on this release. Scientists will want to watch for our next release as well. There are quite a few additional capabilities being planned.”

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, said, “Every year in our company history, DNASTAR software has been cited in peer reviewed publications more often than any other commercial sequence assembly or analysis software. That strong record shows the confidence that life scientists have in DNASTAR to develop and deliver useful, scientifically strong software to meet their experimental needs and solve their DNA and protein sequence and structure problems. By providing powerful tools within Lasergene 9, we are pleased to continue the vision we’ve sustained over our long history of providing easy to use sequence assembly and analysis software for all life scientists at an affordable cost on their desktop computers.”