What's New in MacVector 10.0? (Have a look at our screencasts showing the new features of MacVector 10 as well). New Interface The user interface of MacVector has been reworked to be more tightly integrated with OS X. All MacVector windows now use OS X style toolbars and the menu structure has been slightly rearranged to more closely follow OS X standards. More importantly, many windows now use a tabbed interface to reduce window clutter. For example, the main sequence window now has tabs for the Sequence Editor, Map view, Features list and Annotations list. A convenient "Replica" toolbar button lets you open a second window when you need to see multiple views on a sequence at one time. This gives you the freedom to use MacVector in the traditional multiple window way, or to take advantage of the new tabbed approach to reduce the number of windows on screen at one time. 
Enhanced Feature Editing The main sequence feature and annotations views have been revised to use standard OS X lists. The actual feature editor has been completely replaced with an interface that simplifies creating and editing features that conform to the GenBank format. 
In addition, feature lists can now be exported in Sequin table format which simplifies submitting sequences to GenBank using the Sequin submission editor. Enhanced Search Functions The Find function has been reworked so that sequence documents can be searched not only based on sequence, but also based on the content and type of features associated with the sequence. In particular, because the Features and Graphics views are linked, you can choose to select all matching features to simplify changing the visual appearance of all features with similar characteristics. 
Primer 3 MacVector now has an all new primer design function using the popular Primer3 algorithm. Simply choose a region to amplify and it will automatically find the best ranked pairs of primers. You can also find primers based on product size, by defining flanking regions or even specify your own primers and have Primer3 evaluate them for suitability. The results are displayed in interactive tabular and graphical format, linked to the parent sequence. You can select primers and/or products and copy/paste to other windows or use to create new features on the sequence. Finally, you can ask Primer3 to design an third internal hybridization primer useful in techniques such as Real-Time PCR. See a video here of the new Primer Design module. 
Simplified Click Cloning There is now the option to automatically scan all opened sequences for restriction enzymes and display the results in the main sequence map view. You can choose which enzyme file to use by default and limit the search by number of cut sites, length of sequence etc. This automated analysis dramatically simplifies "click cloning" as you typically no longer need to run a separate restriction enzyme analysis before selecting the source and destination restriction sites in the map view. See here for a short video overview of this funtion. 
Miscellaneous Enhancements Menu options are no longer disabled when a target sequence is locked. Instead, you are prompted to allow automatic unlocking when you try to invoke a function that would modify the document. You can now save sequence features in a format suitable for use in the NCBI Sequin program for submitting sequences to Genbank. Choose File->Save As… and select the Sequin Feature Table format. There is a new toolbar option in the Sequence Confirmation and Contig Editor windows to display 3 or 6 frame translations underneath the consensus sequence. The Entrez Browser window now supports searching of all available databases at the NCBI, although you can still only directly retrieve sequence entries or PubMed documents. A new preview pane contains a direct web interface to the NCBI web site to view and open non-sequence related links. All downloads now occur as a job in the background, particularly useful as MacVector can now download the large “contig” entries that may contain many MegaBases of sequence. The restriction enzymes shipped with MacVector have been updated to the latest available from the REBASE site. We've also got a page of screencasts (short videos) showing the new features of MacVector 10. Click on the link below to download the MacVector 10.0 Release Notes MacVector 10.0 Release Notes Availability A time-limited "public beta" of MacVector 10.0 will be made available for download in early March 2008. Customers with active maintenance contracts will be notified of the date of the final release via e-mail and will be sent CDs when available. | 
