As part of its commitment to introducing third generation DNA sequencing technology to the market, Pacific Biosciences has launched a software developer’s network – the PacBio DevNet – at the Eighteenth International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB 2010).

Throughout the development of the company’s Single Molecule Real Time (SMRT) technology platform, Pacific Biosciences has been working closely with members of the informatics community to develop and define standards for working with single molecule sequence data. Now, as the company prepares for the commercial launch of the PacBio RS, it is launching a more formal program to support the needs of the informatics community.

The PacBio DevNet was created to support the ecosystem of academic informatics developers, life scientists, and independent software vendors interested in creating tools to work with PacBio’s third generation sequencing data. Interested parties can sign up for the PacBio DevNet at www.pacbiodevnet.com, a hub for data sets, source code for algorithms, application programming interfaces (APIs), conversion tools to industry standard formats, and documentation related to SMRT sequencing.

Eric Schadt, Chief Scientific Officer for Pacific Biosciences commented: “Single Molecule Real Time sequencing introduces entirely new dimensions to data, such as a time component, that are unlike anything the bioinformatics community has encountered to this point. Therefore, in addition to a strong internal focus on informatics development, we are committed to supporting third-party software development and facilitating the rapid adoption of this new data type into the scientific community where the really exciting ‘big science’ can begin to happen.”

At the ISMB conference, PacBio scientists and collaborators will present results from some of their informatics development efforts to date, including new algorithms tailored to the unique characteristics of the SMRT data such as its long reads. Pacific Biosciences has also developed a suite of data management and analysis software tools that mimic the granularity, scalability and functionality of the PacBio RS. These informatics solutions are designed to efficiently integrate with the user’s LIMS system, making them accessible not only to high-end informatics researchers, but also to biologists and clinical researchers.

"The release of PacBio's tools under an open source license and the launch of its Developer’s Network will foster the creation of tools that maximize the value of SMRT sequencing," said Reece Hart, chief scientist, Genome Commons. “We look forward to contributing to a robust analytical ecosystem that allows more scientists to exploit the new possibilities enabled by this technology.”

Pacific Biosciences’ mission is to transform the way humankind acquires, processes and interprets data from living systems.