Brian Walsh, PhD, started his career as an instructor at the University of Wisconsin. Brian joined DNASTAR in 2016 and has spent 3 years in customer support, technical support, and software development and 4 years as the Scientific Lead for the MegAlign Pro application.  Introduction In my early career as a phylogeneticist, I used whichever software was available in our lab.  For the first few years, this was fine. But as my projects grew to include hundreds of samples, the software became increasingly cumbersome and unresponsive.  In addition, I was needing to use 8+ often pr ..read more

Webinar: Gene Homology at Scale Matthew Keyser DNASTAR Senior Product Manager Sequence homology is crucial to uncovering shared evolutionary descent of organisms from one or more common ancestors. Unfortunately, most software can only determine homology one gene at a time. Need something faster and more efficient? New with Lasergene 17.6, MegAlign Pro features an innovative homology pathway designed to accurately reveal evolutionary connections between entire bacterial genomes or eukaryotic chromosomes. Join us for a  live demo of the workflow, which takes just seconds to set up a ..read more

Date: 3/21/24 Version Affected: Lasergene 17.5 and earlier (when used on or after 3/21/2024) Version Fixed: Lasergene 17.6 Issue: With the release of Lasergene 17.6 on 3/21/2024, we updated Bioconductor to the latest version. The new version uses a Bayesian shrinkage statistic, “lfcShrink,” and eliminates use of the “Wald stat” that was used by Bioconductor at the time Lasergene 17.5 and earlier were released. (Read Bioconductor’s response to a user about this substitution). This update impacts anyone that continues using SeqMan NGen 17.5 or earlier to assemble RNA-Seq data using DESeq2 norma ..read more

Date: 3/21/24 Version Affected: Lasergene 17.6 Version Fixed: NA Issue: When all four of the following conditions are met, SeqMan NGen assembly results will contain a corrupted ArrayStar (.astar) file: SeqMan NGen version 17.6 is used to run the assembly The RNA-Seq assembly workflow is specified DESeq2 or edgeR is chosen as the normalization method One or more sequence files used in the assembly contain spaces in their file names When these conditions occur, the .astar file is created as usual during assembly. However, attempting to open the assembly in ArrayStar results in an error m ..read more

Date: 3/21/24 Version Affected: Lasergene 17.5 and later Version Fixed: NA Issue: MegAlign Pro users running macOS 14 (Sonoma) receive an error message when attempting to build a phylogenetic tree using the RAxML method, first introduced in Lasergene 17.5. Resolution: We are currently working on addressing this issue. In the meantime, here are some alternatives: Build the tree using the newer, faster method, RAxML-NG, introduced in Lasergene 17.6. If you have not yet updated to Lasergene 17.6, the next best option is to build the tree with the neighbor-joining algorithm BioNJ.   Run M ..read more

Date: 3/21/24 Version Affected: Noted in Lasergene 17.6, but may affect earlier versions too Version Fixed: NA Issue: A splash screen is a small window with the name of the application that appears briefly when you first launch most software applications. When running Lasergene 17.6 on a macOS 14 (Sonoma) machine, we have observed that the application splash screens initially appear in normal orientation, then flip horizontally and turn upside down. This behavior may also occur in earlier versions of Lasergene. This minor issue occurs for only a few seconds and does not affect the performance ..read more

Date: 3/21/24 Version Affected: Noted in Lasergene 17.5, but may affect earlier versions too Version Fixed: Lasergene 17.6 Issue: If the MegAlign Pro Sequences view displays the “sequence logo” track and you export an image of the view to PNG, JPG, or Microsoft PowerPoint formats, the white background of the track may cover up and obscure adjacent data. Resolution: This issue was fixed with the release of Lasergene 17.6 in March 2024. To install the latest version of Lasergene, go to the My Licenses page of our website. For further information, please contact DNASTAR at 866-511-5090 ..read more

LASERGENE 17.6 RELEASE NOTES Lasergene 17.6 is now available to download. This release includes: Significant usability improvements for protein analysis in Protean 3D New NovaDock AI workflow using AlphaFold-Multimer method Powerful new functionality for sequence alignments and phylogenetic analysis in MegAlign Pro Updates for RNA-Seq and templated genome alignments in Lasergene Genomics Bug fixes for SeqBuilder Pro and SeqMan Ultra SEE DETAILS Updates for sequence alignments in MegAlign Pro include: A new gene homology alignment algorithm enables users to identify and compare subs ..read more

Webinar: Master software techniques for cloning, expression, and visualization Brian Anderson DNASTAR Sales Manager Presented by DNASTAR Sales Manager Brian Anderson, this webinar features a live demonstration of several applications in the Lasergene package. In this 1-hour webinar, Brian demonstrates how to: Upload data and do cloning and expression workflows in SeqBuilder Pro Extrapolate and characterize proteins using Lasergene Protein Brian also discusses how optimized E. coli hosts from Scarab Genomics can be used to efficiently produce proteins and nucleic acids, and ..read more

Over the past 39 years, DNASTAR software has been cited in over 90,600 peer-reviewed publications. Our customers are hard at work studying everything from viruses to vertebrates.  At the time of this writing, 2023 is not yet finished, but our software has been cited over 3,600 times, including in these papers: Virtual cloning: Isolation, genomic and biological characterizations of a rhabdovirus from mandarin fish Multiple sequence alignment: Prevalence of foodborne viruses and influenza A virus from poultry processing plants to retailed chickens Sanger sequence alignment: A genomic del ..read more