The Bioinformatics Blog

Continuing on the topic of bioinformatics tools for researchers, I thought I’d move away from R for a bit. The tool for today is Vector NTI. Fomerly Vector NTI was a product of Informax. To use Vector NTI one had to purchase a license, costing in the thousands of dollars. Then Vector was purchased by Invitrogen. This was great for researchers, because now Invitrogen offers annual, renewable licenses for free to academic researchers. Basically all that you need to do now is to sign up on the invitrogen site for the Vector NTI User Community and confirm that you are actually an academic researcher to get your free license.

Enough of the “how to get it” spiel, why would you want to get Vector? Think of it as a swiss army knife of research software. A central feature of the software is the local database. The database stores DNA, RNA, and protein molecule sequences, restriction enzymes with recognition sequences, oligos with sequences, gel markers, citations, blast results, and analysis results. The database comes prepopulated with many molecules (especially from the Invitrogen product line), oligos, markers, etc. Furthermore, the database doesn’t just store sequences, but also features, such as genes other key features. New molecules are easily added to the database. To add any of the molecules in the database to the current Vector tool all you have to do is drag it from the database window into the tool window.

Okay, okay. I know what you’re saying, “Yeah yeah yeah, I can already store my data in a database.” But that isn’t all. Say you have a molecule that you want to design PCR primers for. Vector can do that for you, and help analyze multiplex PCR primers. Want to clone a DNA segment? Not a problem. Use the database to figure out the best vector and electronically create the molecule ahead of time. There are even cloning wizards!

What about sequencing? Say you run some standard dye-terminator capillary sequencing on an ABI machine. You can actually load the *.abi file directly into Vector to analyze and edit the chromatogram. Say you’ve cloned the DNA you were interested in and sequenced it in both directions. Load the *.abi file into the Contig module of Vector, edit the chromatograms, and then align them with the electronic molecule to see if your product matches expectation.

And all of these things are just the beginning of what you can do with Vector NTI. If you want to find out more, get it yourself and try it out.