Life Technologies Launches New Bioinformatics Software Platform Enabling Bio-Design and Gene Synthesis from Next Generation Sequencing Data
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Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) has announced the launch of Vector NTI® Express Designer, the latest advancement in its Vector NTI® software platform, which offers researchers comprehensive and streamlined custom vector and genetic construct design and synthesis. The desktop software tool is designed for molecular biology, metabolic engineering, genetic engineering, and synthetic biology professionals who want to rationally design, assemble and order synthetic genetic "parts," optimizing genetic components for a broad range of applications.
An extension of the Vector NTI® software offerings, Express Designer incorporates an integrated gene synthesis service for rapid sequence submission and order placement, effectively building a bridge from DNA sequence to gene synthesis. Customers can use the Express Designer software tools to design custom DNA parts and submit them directly to Life Technologies' GeneArt® portal for synthesis.
"Molecular and synthetic biologists can now move from construct design to synthesis faster than ever before," said Nathan Wood, General Manager and Vice President of Synthetic Biology at Life Technologies. "This launch represents a true game changer in the ease, speed and accuracy with which investigators can design and order DNA customized to their needs, as well as the increased confidence they can have that constructs will perform successfully in their experiments."
Vector NTI® Express Designer also provides sequence optimization to fine tune expression levels of cloned genes, enables construction of multiple vectors for compatible and simultaneous function, and generates variants from template DNA parts, devices, and circuits more effectively. In addition to designing and ordering custom components, the software also contains an electronic database or "mini electronic lab notebook" that allows researchers to maintain a searchable record of genetic parts, constructs and experimental results that can be referred to and utilized to optimize constructs and circuits.
"The Vector NTI Express Designer will allow us to tackle difficult design challenges in synthetic biology," said Christopher Voigt, Ph.D., associate professor of Biological Engineering at M.I.T. "The software automates and facilitates the design process with an intuitive graphical-user interface where well-characterized and annotated parts can be drag-and-dropped to create standard devices and advanced circuits." Voigt is a leader in the study of circuit design underlying the development of synthetic organisms, a process that requires constructing synthetic multi-gene pathways.
"The power of the Vector NTI Express Designer database is that it allows us to track and analyze our experimental results so that we avoid duplicating effort and focus on getting to the answer more quickly," said Steve Mayfield, Ph.D., professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "We can focus more on what we want our constructs to do and less on how to make them do it." Mayfield is a pioneer in the genetic design of organisms such as algae for biofuel production.
Vector NTI® Express Designer is built on a the Vector NTI® Sequence Analysis and Bioinformatic Tools platform, and so inherits many of the applications associated with that platform, including: sequence analysis and design, annotation, and illustration; molecular biology data management; open reading frame and restriction enzyme analysis and mapping; primer design; recombinant molecule design, including Gateway® and TOPO® cloning, GeneArt® seamless cloning & high-order assembly and gene synthesis.
Built on the trusted history of high-quality sequence analysis and design tools of Vector NTI® Software, Vector NTI® Express Designer enables rational bio-design on the most popular computing architectures, including native Mac OSX 10.6+, Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 8 operating systems. Its plug-in architecture allows users to have confidence that additional features and functionality can be added to the platform and deliver more value over time while its Automatic Updater ensures that users will be automatically notified of updates and given the option to download new or updated plug-ins to always be running the latest, most complete software package available.
