For Immediate Release
Contact:
Liliana Avila
Marketing Communications Manager
avila@franz.com
(510) 548-3600, x113

Lisp and Franz Inc.'s Allegro CL helps Bioinformatics reach the next level.

Berkeley, CA- (August 20, 2000) -- Researchers in the field of BioInformatics are using Allegro CL and Lisp to better analyze their data.

Developing novel algorithms and applications in BioInformatics is often a matter of bringing together diverse datasheets and computational approaches in new ways. Issues facing the Bioinformatics industry include:

• Huge volume of heterogeneous data and new data types created daily -- 3 terabytes/month
• Simulation, synthesis and design require tremendous computing resources
• New algorithms to discover, and new applications to identify.

Larry Hunter, Director of the Center for Computational Pharmacology, says that although there are many competing programming environments for Bioinformaticians, Lisp provides some powerful advantages. "The basic philosophy of Lisp programming is to create high-level functions that are easily composed. This approach encourages code reuse, integration of multiple data sources and algorithms, and easy experimentation. Modern implementations provide state of the art programming environments, integrated persistent databases and web servers, and full CORBA connectivity, "says Hunter.

"Perl has been the standard language for Bioinformatics for a long time, but it isn't dynamic enough to support complex data analysis" says Dr. Sheng-Chuan Wu, Vice President Corporate Development at Franz Inc.

"Allegro CL, the leading Lisp Development Environment currently available, provides the power needed for such massive data amounts and calculations. Its powerful symbols and ease of manipulation allows developers to rapidly prototype applications and to modify data while an application is running. Allegro CL also provides a powerful interface manager to represent simulations graphically," adds Dr. Wu.

Franz Inc. is committed to helping Bioinformaticians generate multiple levels simulations and auto-feedback from their experiments and supporting the Bioinformatics community. Founded in 1984, Franz Inc. has demonstrated consistent growth and profitability. For more information, call 1-888-CLOS NOW, email info@franz.com or visit http://franz.com.