Free Genetic Analysis Software Available on Biowire.com

Biowire.com (Mountain View, CA) has released its own genetic analysis software package, called Jellyfish, which it is making freely available to life science researchers through the Internet. According to a company release, the new package features easy-to-use tools, graphical sequence display for easy navigation, and one-click submission of sequences to genetic analysis web sites.

"Most genetic analysis software available today is either cumbersome or time-consuming to use, or prohibitively expensive for many scientists," said Tom Schultz, Biowire.com president and CEO. "We developed Jellyfish to facilitate the day-to-day research tasks of biologists and are distributing the program free to any scientist who registers on Biowire.com's web site."

Jellyfish provides a uniform Internet gateway that enables scientists to simultaneously submit and analyze information from multiple genetic databases. It performs the most often used data analyses, such as viewing DNA and protein sequence information, restriction enzyme analysis, and DNA/protein alignment

In addition to Jellyfish, Biowire.com, which was established in December of last year by four scientists with some venture capital backing, provides user-generated reviews of products for life science research. Four months into it, BioWire has 18,000 registered users (you have to register to read or write a review) and 14,000 reviews already online. For a limited time, BioWire.com is offering money for product reviews—$25 for the first review, $10 each for six additional reviews. These reviews are intended to provide unbiased, first-hand information on using thousands of products from over 30 (and growing) suppliers.

For more information: Tom Schultz, President and CEO, Biowire.com, 2440 W. El Camino Real, Suite 520, Mountain View, CA 94040. Tel: 650- 318.0329.

By Laura DeFrancesco