Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) has signed a global site license agreement for CLC bio's Next Generation Sequencing solution, CLC Genomics Workbench. The site license covers all researchers at all BGI sites, both inside and outside of China.

Head of Bioinformatics Division at BGI, Ruiqiang Li states, "We have chosen CLC Genomics Workbench as our platform for analyzing Next Generation Sequencing data after testing several commercial solutions, because it's simply in a league of its own when it comes to flexibility and the way the Next Generation Sequencing tools can be used together with our own algorithms. In an organization of our size - with seventeen Illumina GA analyzers, as well as two AB/SOLiD and three Roche/454 Next Generation Sequencing machines, all of them running at full capacity - efficient workflows are of critical importance. We can support and expand our workflows by giving our scientists easy access via the Workbench to our own in-house developed algorithms. In no time, CLC Genomics Workbench has proved amazingly popular with our internal researchers, due to the fast, user-friendly and versatile platform it provides."

"We are most thrilled to have agreed on a global site license with one of the best bioinformatics and sequencing facilities in the world, only four weeks after our solution for analyzing and visualizing Next Generation Sequencing data was released. Furthermore, we are honored that the famous bioinformatics researchers from BGI have chosen our Workbench as a working platform for both our and their own algorithms, side by side. CLC Genomics Workbench will help the scientists at BGI with their daily research, including prestigious projects like the Giant Panda Genome Project and the 1000 Genomes Project," said Michael Heltzen, director of partner sales, CLC bio.

CLC Genomics Workbench is the first comprehensive analysis package which can analyze and visualize data from all the major NGS platforms, such as Solexa by Illumina, SOLiD by Applied Biosystems, 454 by Roche Applied Science, and HeliScope by Helicos. CLC Genomics Workbench takes full advantage of "paired end" data and supports a number of features and work-tasks, such as reference assembly of genomes, de novo assembly of genomes, SNP detection using advanced models, multiplexing, and high-throughput trimming.

Beijing Genomics Institute is one of the leading global Genomics Institutes in the world, established in July 1999. Since then, BGI has grown rapidly and is partner in a number of international consortiums, including partnerships with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, NIH and NHGRI on the 1,000 Genomes Project.