The Hitachi Software MiraiBio Group Blog

New this week:

1. By popular demand, you can now import GenBank and multi-GenBank files into SmartNote, including those exported from other programs, such as DNASIS Max and Vector NTI.

2. We have added a new option for displaying the predicted amino acid sequence aligned with a DNA sequence. Use the ExPASy Translate tool and specify “Includes Nucleotide Sequence” for the “Output Format” option. Thank you, Jessica Min for this suggestion. This should help users who need to design primers for mutagenesis.

3. Support for IUPAC codes in sequences is also being added this week.

Please keep the feedback coming!

DNASIS SmartNote was recently released to a limited group of scientists and attracted some great feedback. Here’s a quick summary:

Some users said they needed more help getting started using it. This is not surprising, since DNASIS SmartNote’s design is innovative in two ways - it’s a meta-application (an application that uses other applications) and it’s also the first bioinformatics tool we know of that combines a lab notebook, sequence analysis and social networking.

Others said they want to be able to import sequences in formats other than FASTA. I’m happy to report that GenBank support will soon be available on the live site.

Finally, we are starting to get requests to support specific workflows, such as designing primers for mutagenesis. One user suggested adding a view that shows both DNA and protein sequences. We would love to hear from other DNASIS SmartNote users so we know where to focus our efforts to best meet users’ needs. So please send us feedback or post to this shared blog. Together, we can make DNASIS SmartNote even better!