CELERA GENOMICS AND PARACEL COLLABORATE
ON INFORMATICS TOOLS FOR GENE DISCOVERY
Celera Genomics Corp., a unit of Perkin-Elmer and Paracel Inc. announced that they have agreed to collaborate on the development of high-resolution informatics tools. The companies will concentrate on developing these innovative new tools to analyze genomic information that will provide a better understanding of biological processes. Scientists from both companies will focus on EST (express sequence tags) clustering and whole genome data mining capabilities, while leveraging technology for sequencing quality estimation and similarity searching. Whole genome data mining will be a fresh approach to perform both DNA and protein level comparisons of the sequence data.
As part of the collaboration, Paracel will install a GeneMatcher high-performance genetic data analysis system at Celera. The development will be implemented on GeneMatcher and applied to the scaled-up searching challenge faced by Celera.
"This is an exciting opportunity for Paracel that will allow us to participate with Celera in its plans to substantially complete the sequencing of the human genome in three years. It is also a welcome endorsement by Celera of Paracel's scientific and technical capabilities and its GeneMatcher technology," stated Dr. Kwang-I Yu, Paracel's chairman, president, and CEO.
"We are enthusiastic about working with Paracel and are confident that the expertise and technology that company brings will have a significant impact on the aggressive goals set by Celera," said Dr. Craig Venter, Celera's president and chief scientific officer.
GeneMatcher is a massively parallel genomic data analysis engine. A single GeneMatcher contains more than 6,000 custom processors implemented in application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology. These programmable processors execute a full range of dynamic programming algorithms such as Smith-Waterman, Hidden Markov Models, frame search, and profile search. Paracel offers BioView Toolkit, an application programmer's interface (API), and BioView Workbench, a Web-based graphical user interface (GUI), with GeneMatcher.
Celera, based in Rockville, Maryland, intends to become the definitive source of genomic and associated medical information by compiling the bioinformatics tools and scientific expertise necessary to extract biological knowledge from genomic data, including new gene discovery, polymorphism assay systems development, and databases for use by the scientific community. More information about Celera can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.celera.com
The Perkin-Elmer Corporation is a leading supplier of systems for life science research and related applications. It develops, manufactures, and markets life science systems and analytical instruments used in markets such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, forensics, environmental testing, food, agriculture, and chemical manufacturing. Headquartered in Connecticut, Perkin-Elmer had revenues of more than $1.5 billion in fiscal 1998 and employs more than 7,000 people worldwide. Information about Perkin-Elmer is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.perkin-elmer.com
Paracel Inc., founded in 1992, provides high-performance genetic data and text analysis systems for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and government markets. Paracel is a privately held company located in Pasadena, California. More information about Paracel is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.paracel.com