Wed, Jul 7, 2004: Academic Research Community Receives Free Access to PatternHunter Homology Search Tool
Bioinformatics Solutions Inc., an advanced bioinformatics software provider is excited to announce that their novel software program for homology searching, PatternHunter 2.0, is now available to the academic research community for free.
PatternHunter 2.0 is a general-purpose homology search tool used by leading genomic centers worldwide. It now has the full functionalities of BLAST (BLASTn, BLASTp, tBLASTx, tBLAST, BLASTx) and input and output formats compatible with BLAST. PatternHunter 2.0 uses modern homology search technology i.e. optimized multiple spaced seeds. Says Li, The program changes the way homology search is done. Researchers no longer need to trade sensitivity for speed. PatternHunter can approach Smith-Waterman sensitivity and yet run 3000 times faster.Please see our "PatternHunter II paper", to find out how we have done it. Says President Ming Li, We want the academic community to have full access to PatternHunter 2.0. These tools were designed for the advancement of science, so we want to get it into the hands of those people who are in fact doing the science.? Academics will be able to use PatternHunter on Windows for free, with no limitations. However, technical support will not be provided. If a customer wishes, they can purchase annual technical support at a minimal cost, so that they can receive unlimited technical support during that period. We prefer to get the software in the hands of the people who need it the most? states Li, That is, researchers who may not have a budget for this type of software purchase, but who are interested in using the best homology tool in terms of accuracy, speed and ability to process large amounts of data using very little computing power.? Just some of the new features in the complete suite include PatternHunter ability to explicitly avoid 6 frame translations, allowing frame shift gaps (something not done by tBlastx) and searching against arbitrarily large databases without running out of memory. The software can also replace the need for MegaBlast for highly similar sequences, MUMmer for very similar genomes, specialized programs to search for SNPs. MegaBlast achieves its speed by longer seeds and MUMmer uses suffix trees, which are not suitable for approximate pattern matching. All these approaches result in low sensitivity. Without compromising sensitivity, PatternHunter 2.0 gives you faster speed than all of them. See the "PatternHunter" webpage for more information. Whether for large database query, genome-genome comparison or DNA-protein translated search, BSI has the solution: The full academic version of PatternHunter 2.0 is available on BSI website at "Academic Free Version". Corporate customers may download a 30-day trial evaluation from: "Corporate PatternHunter Demo" or send an email to ph-sales@bioinformaticssolutions.com. Bioinformatics Solutions (BSI) provides solutions to core bioinformatics problems in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, by innovative ideas, advanced algorithms and top-notch software development. In addition to PatternHunter software, BSI offers other products like, RAPTOR and PROSPECT PRO, 3-D protein structure prediction software and PEAKS, for auto de novo and protein identification of MS/MS data. BSI is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario.
