For Immediate Release

MADISON, Wisconsin-August 25, 2008  –  DNASTAR, Inc. today announced the release of its latest version of Next Generation Sequence Assembly software, SeqMan NGen.  Designed to be used with the company’s Lasergene v8.0 and above for analysis of the assembled data, the desktop software allows users to perform both templated and de novo assemblies on data generated from Roche 454® and Illumina® systems.    SeqMan NGen can be used on either Windows® (Vista or XP) or Macintosh® (OS 10.5 or 10.4) operating systems.  By combining the assembly tool with a commonly used tool for sequence analysis and visualization, the company believes that it is providing valuable, easy-to-learn and use tools for a wide range of the conventional and Next Generation sequence customer base.      

Lasergene is a comprehensive, easy to use suite of tools for molecular biologists and geneticists used primarily in the assembly and analysis of DNA and protein sequences.  It has a broad application base in the SNP discovery and analysis areas. 

DNASTAR has offered the sequencing community tools for assembly and analysis of Next Generation sequence data for over 1 year.  SeqMan NGen’s introduction will allow users to perform larger, more complex assemblies and to better use the analysis tools offered in the latest versions of Lasergene.   This is seen as a strong positive since users can continue using software they know and understand for both conventional and Next Generation sequence assembly and analysis.  This will save facilities much money since they will already have many users familiar with Lasergene for the analysis part of the tandem.  Facilities wishing to standardize around Lasergene for analysis can continue to do so while adding Next Generation sequence assembly. 

DNASTAR has created software for more than 24 years to increase researchers’ productivity.  Currently, DNASTAR produces Lasergene®, SeqMan NGen™, GenVision®, a data visualization software application; and ArrayStar®, a microarray gene expression visualization tool. 

Email: steinhauserb@dnastar.com

Website: www.dnastar.com