Gene Codes releases Sequencher 5.0

Gene Codes Corporation announces the release of Sequencher 5.0. It incorporates new DNA sequence data alignment algorithms with SNP and methylation analysis for next-generation DNA sequence data. Performance for assembly and alignment of sequences and contigs is hundreds of times faster. New alignment functions and database searching features make getting reliable results from both capillary electrophoresis and next-generation data faster than ever.

Gene Codes prioritized next-generation DNA analysis features for the Sequencher 5.0 release. It gives scientists an easy-to-use interface in the powerful, scientist-friendly tool that they are already comfortable with, while building the bridge to overcome the difficulty of using command-line driven algorithms. "NextGen support in Sequencher builds on our tradition of expanding the software technology to meet the needs of our clients in the lab," said Howard Cash, CEO of Gene Codes Corporation. "We are not introducing a new product for our client to buy in order to analyze their latest data. They've already made that investment. All of our current clients are receiving the upgrade to Sequencher 5.0 with NextGen support at no extra charge." Gene Codes plans to continue adding new functions from third parties, as Cash explained at the BIO 2011 International Convention in Washington D.C. this morning. "Now that we have restructured the Sequencher architecture to put a graphic interface on algorithms and tools like Clustal, Maq, GSNAP and Tablet, we expect to release functionality for both Sanger and NGS data analysis at a fast rate."

Sequencher 5.0 is capable of handling any traditional DNA data set from capillary electrophoresis machines and data from all of the major next-generation machines; Roche 454, Illumina, Life Technologies SOLiD, and Ion Torrent. Didier Poncet with INRA in France said, "The most beneficial feature is doing alignment with the GSNAP algorithm and viewing it in Tablet on my personal computer." Danielle Beekman at University of Iowa concurred by saying "We just installed Sequencher 5.0 and it was amazingly fast and easy for aligning sequences with GSNAP."

GSNAP is an alignment algorithm which can detect complex variants and splicing in short reads. It was developed by Dr. Thomas Wu at Genentech and incorporated into this release of Sequencher. Dr. Wu feels that "Sequencher makes it easy for biologists to use GSNAP to align their sequencing reads, and provides an intuitive graphical interface for viewing the results."