DNASTAR is a global

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

software company incorporated in 1984 that is headquartered in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

. DNASTAR develops and sells software for

sequence analysis In bioinformatics, sequence analysis is the process of subjecting a DNA, RNA or peptide sequence to any of a wide range of analytical methods to understand its features, function, structure, or evolution. Methodologies used include sequence alignm ...

in the fields of

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

, and

structural biology Structural biology is a field that is many centuries old which, and as defined by the Journal of Structural Biology, deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every le ...

Software

DNASTAR software (Lasergene) first gained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s for its

sequence assembly In bioinformatics, sequence assembly refers to aligning and merging fragments from a longer DNA sequence in order to reconstruct the original sequence. This is needed as DNA sequencing technology might not be able to 'read' whole genomes in one ...

and analysis capabilities of

Sanger sequencing Sanger sequencing is a method of DNA sequencing that involves electrophoresis and is based on the random incorporation of chain-terminating dideoxynucleotides by DNA polymerase during in vitro DNA replication. After first being developed by Frederi ...

data. Lasergene 17.3.3 was released in June 2022. DNASTAR software is available for desktop computers running

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

as well as for use on

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

. In 2007, DNASTAR expanded their offerings to include software for

next-generation sequencing Massive parallel sequencing or massively parallel sequencing is any of several high-throughput approaches to DNA sequencing using the concept of massively parallel processing; it is also called next-generation sequencing (NGS) or second-generation s ...

and

. DNASTAR's next-gen software supports data from Illumina,

Ion Torrent Ion semiconductor sequencing is a method of DNA sequencing based on the detection of hydrogen ions that are released during the polymerization of DNA. This is a method of "sequencing by synthesis", during which a complementary strand is built base ...

, and

Pacific Biosciences Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (aka PacBio) is an American biotechnology company founded in 2004 that develops and manufactures systems for gene sequencing and some novel real time biological observation. PacBio describes its platfor ...

and allows the user to assemble, align, analyze and visualize genomic data. Lasergene's use in next-generation sequence assembly and analysis was contributed as a chapter, written by company scientists, to the 2008 book ''Next Generation Genome Sequencing'' edited by Michael Janitz. DNASTAR software is utilized by pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, and clinical researchers in more than 90 countries.

Reviews

Writing in The Scientist, David R. Smith gave positive reviews to several bioinformatics software packages including DNAstar, but said that his bioinformatics skills plateaued and the licensing and upgrading costs were a significant proportion of his lab's operating budget.

Accolades

In 2007, DNASTAR was awarded a Reader's Choice Gold Award by '' Scientific Computing Magazine'' for the Lasergene sequence analysis software. The 2008 book ''Inventing Entrepreneurs: Technology Innovators and their Entrepreneurial Journey'' by Gerard George and Adam J. Bock includes DNASTAR as an example of an innovative and entrepreneurial success story. A research study by ''

BMC Genomics ''BMC Genomics'' is an open-access scientific journal covering all areas of genomics and proteomics. The journal was established in 2000 and is published by BioMed Central. The editor-in-chief is Matteo Pasini. Its 2021 impact factor is 4.56. Abs ...

'' in 2010 determined that SeqMan (DNASTAR's next-gen sequence assembly application) assemblies performed best, with more novel sequences and better recapitulation of transcripts. Another ''BMC Genomics'' study in 2011 determined that the best overall contig performance resulted from a SeqMan NGen assembly.

Customers

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust. It is located on the Wellcome G ...

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Bioinformatics software American companies established in 1984 Research support companies

Software

Reviews

Accolades

Customers

See also

References

External links