Golden Helix upgrades high-performance genetic data analysis software

12 August 2010

Golden Helix, Inc. has announced the third instalment of its SNP & Variation Suite (SVS) 7 software, designed to increase the productivity of genetic researchers and to appeal to an expanded market.

SVS 7 is an integrated collection of high-performance analytic tools for rich, multi-dimensional approaches to uncovering genetic causes of disease and other phenotypes.

Several enhancements were key to making genetic research accessible to a broader research community, including the addition of a fully integrated, interactive genome browser that enables Golden Helix customers to directly compare their data and results with that from industry standard sources such as The Centre for Applied Genomics’ Database of Genomic Variants or UCSC’s Genome Browser.

"The fact that a number of existing genome browsers and several sites provide the same information has been part of the problem,” said Gabe Rudy, vice president of development at Golden Helix. “The challenge is that researchers are typically forced to bounce from site to site or browser to browser to explore their data, because only pieces of the information reside in any one place. This is both time consuming and distracting. We think it's best if as much information as possible resides alongside the researcher’s data for easy, fast, and interactive comparisons.”

Golden Helix also added the capability to analyze non-human genomes, such as mouse, rat, chicken, cattle, horse, rice, soy, and others.

“We've experienced significant growth in customers performing advanced statistical analysis on non-human genetic data,” said Josh Forsythe, vice president of sales and marketing. “Until now, there really haven't been any integrated, easy-to-use tools for this market. With this new release, researchers studying non-human genomes can take full advantage of all that SVS has to offer in terms of data management, analysis, and visualization.”

Lastly, based on an explosion of data from the molecular cytogenetics realm, Golden Helix has enabled the direct import of data from NimbleGen’s family of CGH arrays and also Affymetrix’ Cytogenetics Whole-Genome 2.7M and Molecular Inversion Probe (MIP) arrays. “I am unaware of any segment of the genetic research market that generates data as quickly or on such a consistent scale as do cyto labs,” said Forsythe. “This is a virtual treasure-trove of data and represents tremendous opportunities for understanding more about the role of genetics in constitutional disorders.”