BOS

Biological Operating System 
Helix Genomics 
Reviewed by Susan Boyd
CompChem Solutions

A wealth of tools already exists for bioinformatics applications - and therein lies the problem. To use the full range of freeware, shareware and commercial applications the user must become familiar with many different file formats and software applications.  

Helix Genomics offers a potential solution to the issues of software integration and file sharing. 

Biological Operating System (BOS) is a software toolkit system, written in object-oriented C++, which offers the user a variety of functions and data parsers to allow development of customised applications in bioinformatics. The unique feature of BOS is its use of high-level programming terminology to aid creation of bioinformatics-specific software tools.  

Visualisation tools are supplied and sequence and structural database searching are fully supported. BOS can readily connect with popular public domain databases such as GenBank, EMBL, SwissProt and PDB.

The intuitive nature of the toolkit to biological researchers makes it very easy to use and, once mastered, BOS can accelerate projects significantly.  

The BOS platform is designed as a unifying tool, to give biologists and bioinformaticians the ability to explore the full range of methodologies available. The approach is particularly favoured by academic institutions that have picked up on the additional potential of the system to help in teaching. 

For further information contact Rajani KanthVangala at eurobusiness@helixgenomics.com