Lifescience Company Helicos BioSciences Corporation, US, has announced the launch of the HeliSphere Technology Center, an open access website (http://open.helicosbio.com/) for sharing Helicos data sets and bioinformatics software tools. Launched during the 58th annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, the open source site showcases single molecule sequence reads from whole genome resequencing and digital gene expression runs using the Helicos Genetic Analysis System.
The first sample datasets released include whole genome sequences of the microbes Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Rhodobacter sphaeroides, sequenced with consensus accuracies greater than 99.995 percent. Each sample dataset, containing between six and 12 million aligned reads, was generated from one channel of a 50-channel run on the HeliScope Single Molecule Sequencer. Data from a number of exciting sequencing projects currently underway will be posted on the HeliSphere Technology Center website on a regular basis.
In addition to Helicos data sets, the new website is also a gateway to Helicos' open source project, which includes downloadable source code and software documentation and is hosted on the website http://sourceforge.net/. The site supports 'tarball' downloads of the source code and uses well known shared access tools, such as Wiki docs and Mailman mailing lists. The Helicos Technology Center will also feature an open bug tracking system and will entertain patch submissions from developers.
