University of Giessen enhances their genome analysis capability with the addition of TimeLogic’s FPGA-based Biocomputing platform

CARLSBAD, CA, UNITED STATES - Mar 9, 2017 - For Immediate Release-Giessen, Germany and Carlsbad, CA, USA, March 9, 2017.

Justus-Liebig-University Giessen has added TimeLogics latest Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware to their computational tools platform. This sophisticated technology will help University of Giessen scientists in their efforts to investigate the biotechnological potential of various microorganisms as well as insects and develop rapid and cost-effective screening systems for the presence and spread of particular pathogenicity factors found in bacterial clinical isolates.

TimeLogics DeCypher systems greatly increase the speed of sequence comparison by combining custom field programmable gate array (FPGA) circuitry with optimized implementations of BLAST. With the inclusion of this hardware from TimeLogic, University of Giessen researchers have significantly enhanced their high-throughput genome annotation efforts. According to Michael Murray, Manager of Sales & Marketing for TimeLogic products at Active Motif, Our customer at University of Giessen, Prof. Dr. Alexander Goesmann has been a TimeLogic customer for a long time and were thrilled that hes chosen to incorporate our latest FPGA hardware revision into his sizeable compute facility.

Ted DeFrank, President of Active Motif added, Recent advances in next-generation DNA sequencing technology have created great opportunities for our TimeLogic division and, as a result, Active Motif is investing heavily in this portion of our business. In addition to a major hardware revision, TimeLogic has several additional projects ongoing and we are excited about their continuation as we strive to further strengthen our position as the leader in the field of FPGA-accelerated Biocomputing solutions.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Goesmann, professor for bioinformatics and systems biology at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen added, We are really delighted about the reliability and performance of our TimeLogic systems and we are looking forward to collaborating on projects that are highly relevant for us. An ambitious goal in this respect is to acquire the capacity to analyze 1,000 genomes per day. We have already deployed the TimeLogic system and integrated Tera-BLAST into our software platform EDGAR for large-scale genome comparisons, which has relieved the enormous pressure on our sizeable compute cluster. We also utilize the TimeLogic system to accelerate metagenome analysis that is conducted with our in-house developed software platform MGX. Goesmann continued, Our growing team of bioinformaticians is excited to extend the utilization of the TimeLogic systems and incorporate it into new applications that are currently under development in our group. This includes the provisioning of a scalable sequence analysis pipeline within the de.NBI Cloud computing environment that is currently established as part of the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI). We also look forward to strengthening our relationship with Active Motif and TimeLogic as participants in future research projects.

About Justus-Liebig-University Giessen

The University of Giessen, officially called Justus Liebig University Giessen (German: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), is a large public research university in Giessen, Hessen, Germany. It is named after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertilizer. It covers the areas of arts/humanities, law, economics and business studies, social sciences, history and cultural studies, natural sciences, mathematics, medicine and veterinary medicine. Its university hospital, which has sites in both Gießen and Marburg (the latter of which is the teaching hospital of the University of Marburg), is the only private university hospital in Germany. With about 28,500 students in more than 150 degree courses and about 5,433 staff members (including 381 professors and lecturers as well as 3,039 academic staff) it is the second largest university in Hesse.

The Justus-Liebig Universitys Institute for Systems Biology in Giessen, under the leadership of Professor Alexander Goesmann, forms part of the de.NBI microbial bioinformatics service center, in which Bielefeld University participates along with the University of Giessen. The service center focuses on preparing and developing software solutions for the analysis of genetic material of microorganisms relevant to the fields of medicine and biotechnology. The service center also provides a comprehensive hardware infrastructure, which is being gradually expanded as part of the de.NBIs funding program.

About TimeLogic

TimeLogic, a division of Active Motif, Inc, is the world leader in hardware accelerated bioinformatics search tools which accelerate genome annotation by combining optimized bioinformatics applications with powerful FPGA-based PCIe accelerator cards. This blend of specialized hardware and optimized software provides a perfect combination of performance, accuracy and value. Furthermore, these systems are simple to maintain and scale easily. Utilizing a TimeLogic system reduces pressure on over-used CPU-clusters by off-loading BLAST, VelociMapper (VM), Smith-Waterman (SW) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) tasks to a highly time and energy efficient solution. From the earliest genome sequencing projects in the 1990s to the largest Metagenomics projects undertaken to date, TimeLogic has provided the enabling technology to make this research possible. Active Motif/TimeLogic operates globally through its corporate headquarters in Carlsbad, California, European headquarters in La Hulpe, Belgium and Japanese headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Active Motif/TimeLogic applies a multi-disciplinary approach to create new and modify existing technologies to meet the current and future needs of life science researchers.

Find out more by visiting us at http://www.timelogic.com or contact Michael Murray at tlsales@activemotif.com.