Software can now identify DNA from viruses and speed up diagnoses
Computerworld December 2, 2014
Sequedex software from Los Alamos National Laboratory can slash the time it takes to diagnose some illnesses from weeks to hours
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) announced this weekthat bioinformatics software it created can now identify DNA from fungi, bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, slashing the time it takes to diagnose some illnesses from weeks to hours.
The software can also speed the analysis of cancerous tumor genetics for chemotherapy options and prognosis.
The LANL’s new version of its Sequedex software recognizes patterns in short DNA sequences and then associates those sequences with phylogeny — the genetic evolution of an organism. It examines a collection of DNA fragment sequences “in a similar fashion to doing a search in a web...