DNASTAR Software Grant Supports Ion Torrent Awards

DNASTAR® announced today that it will join Ion Torrent in supporting the Ion PGM Sequencer Grant Program by providing perpetual licenses of its next-gen sequencing suite of software tools to the two European winners of the recently announced extension of the grant program.

DNASTAR next-gen sequencing software suite includes tools to support reference-guided and de novo genome assembly, targeted resequencing, RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq and miRNA alignment and analysis, and in-depth SNP discovery, analysis and genome annotation tools. DNASTAR software is industry leading, as evidenced by the large number of peer reviewed journal publications consistently citing DNASTAR’s tool set.

According to Jonathan Rothberg, founder and CEO of Ion Torrent, “We are exceptionally pleased to have DNASTAR support us and our customers in this program. DNASTAR’s software is well suited to assemble data from the Ion PGM sequencer to produce outstanding analysis and graphical images. DNASTAR is a strong partner and we look forward to working with them to effectively serve life scientists for many years to come.”

Tom Schwei, Vice President and General Manager of DNASTAR, stated, “Just as we’ve been doing for more than a generation of life scientists, we keep up to date with all of the latest sequencing technologies and effectively support them in a wide variety of applications. We are excited about working with Ion Torrent and their customers and we look forward to serving life scientists who choose this sequencing platform in the future.”

Ion Torrent uses a massively parallel semiconductor sequencing technology that detects nucleotide additions without using light, optics, or lasers. Instead, a base is called by simply detecting the release of hydrogen ions following nucleotide incorporation. The Ion PGM sequencer can complete a run in an hour or two, offers semiconductor scalability and costs one tenth the price of most other sequencers to buy and run.

Look for more details on the integration between the two platforms as the Ion Torrent sequencer moves closer to commercial launch later this year.