Know Your Alignments

We often get asked “how do I do an alignment” using MacVector? Well, the answer to that is always “it depends”, and it depends on what you want to learn about your sequence(s). Here’s a quick summary of the different types of alignments and what you would use them for: Multiple Sequence Alignment (File | […]

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Quickly checking a small sequencing project

For analyzing large sequencing datasets you need Assembler. However, many times you do not need a powerful tool but just a quick way to check some sequencing data. For example for checking small sequencing projects, such as a site directed mutagenesis, looking for SNPs in a PCR product, cloning a gene or checking your latest […]

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How Assembler uses quality scores to create assemblies

A common problem with all types of sequence assembly is distinguishing between sequencing errors and true genomic variations. Quality scores are one way to help the algorithm identify if a variation is of high quality and therefore likely to be a SNP or a sequencing error. For Assembler trace files can be basecalled with Phred, […]

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Quickly checking a small sequencing project

For analysing large sequencing datasets, whether de novo or mapping reads against a reference you need Assembler. However, many times you do not need a powerful tool but just a quick way to check some sequencing data. For example for checking small sequencing projects, such as a site directed mutagenesis, looking for SNPs in a […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #41 – Extracting raw data from chromatogram files

Have you ever wanted to know exactly what the total signal value is for individual peaks in a chromatogram file? Perhaps you are looking for mixtures of residues at a particular location and want to get some idea of the relative proportions? You can open .ab1 and .scf chromatogram files directly in MacVector and view […]

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101 things you (maybe) didn’t know about MacVector: #40 – Removing gaps from a DNA or protein sequence

There are often times when you end up with a sequence containing gaps, especially if you make extensive use of the Align To Reference, Contig Assembly or Multiple Sequence Alignment interfaces to generate consensus sequences. You can select and copy the consensus sequence, or even individual aligned reads, from the Align To Reference and Contig […]

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MacVector Talk: January 2015: A review of 2014 and what’s coming in 2015.

MacVector and Assembler: What’s Next! We strive to make MacVector the best sequence analysis app for the Mac. This means our developers are continually at work redesigning every aspect of MacVector, not only to improve functionality, but also to ensure that MacVector is always optimized for the latest versions of OS X. In addition we […]

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MacVector 13.5 is out

MacVector 13.5 was released last week. MacVector 13.5 is the best release yet. It’s had a redesign and rewrite of existing tools to make comparing large sequences faster and to improve handling of NGS data. Additionally the new interface, introduced in MacVector 13.0, has had many “tweaks” in response to user feedback. Plus a continued […]

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MacVector Talk: July 2014: Sequence assembly on the desktop with MacVector and Assembler.

Generating sequencing data is cheaper than it has ever been. However, with this increase in data has come a problem with easy analysis. Assembling 20 reads for your site directed mutagenesis project is easy. Why should dealing with 20 million reads of your bacterial genome be any harder? In our Summer newsletter we talk about […]

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Accessing BAM files from an Assembly Project file

All assemblies are stored using the BAM file format. This is a binary file that stores each read and where and which consensus/contig/reference it is mapped against. It is a compressed version of the pure text SAM format. For some post assembly tasks it is necessary to do further processing on the BAM file. To […]

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