AGILENT Technologies has released version 12.0 of GeneSpring, its bioinformatics software, with new capabilities for the analysis of next-generation sequencing data and the facility to work across for transcriptomic, metabolomics, and proteomic platforms – or as Agilent describes it, ‘multi-omics’.
“GeneSpring 12.0 enables a new breed of integrated biology research with sophisticated analytical, visualisation, and data-management tools”, said Gustavo Salem, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s biological systems division.
A free evaluation of the new software is available until 17 August 2012.
The new release includes a next-generation sequencing (NGS) module for use with Agilent’s SureSelect target-enrichment platform as well as un-targeted next-gen sequencing experiments.
The QC manager within the NGS module includes tools for graphical target enrichment, base quality, mapping and alignment.
Agilent says its software makes it easy for biologists with little experience in next-generation sequencing to manage and analyse their bioinformatics data by providing wizard-driven work sequences.
GeneSpring 12.0 integrates with Agilent’s free eArray portal, enabling users to easily create custom-designed experiments.
The integration of data generated by the various ‘omics’ technologies is, says Agilent, a key element of modern systems biology. The GeneSpring Pathway Architect module is designed to allow researchers to conduct joint pathway-level analysis of virtually any biological entity, including transcripts and splice variants, gene panels, metabolites, and proteins, it says.
The module enables scientists to access ‘curated’ pathway content through WikiPathways, a public-domain resource. Another publicly-available resource, BridgeDB, can be used to map biological identifiers across multiple annotation databases. Data from any of the single-omic experiments can be merged into a multi-omic experiment and used to identify pathways involved in signaling events, disease progression, or toxicity.