HELP! IBM-compatible Plasmid Package?

[Bernard Murray]

In article <4p1agc$sn5 at is.bbsrc.ac.uk>, dunnsm at bbsrc.ac.uk says...
>
>Anybody out there know who sells a PC/Windows compatible plasmid
>construction package?  I can only find MAC versions! Don't need anything
>too fancy/expensive - just a basic cloning aid that gives publication
>quality output.
>Many thanks,
>Steve

I currently use PC/GENE (unfriendly, but lots of functionality) under
DOS and GeneRunner (a little less comprehensive but much more friendly)
under Windows 3.11 for the digest/cut/paste side of things.  Neither
will give you publication quality output of plasmid maps but GeneRunner
gives nice quick'n'dirty diagrams.  For flexible, publication quality
output I use WinPlas and this imports the genbank files from GeneRunner
just fine.  I believe that the author of WinPlas intends to increase
the functionality of the program (which is already pretty good) as far
as helping with eg. subcloning is concerned.  To get a look at the
quality of the output from WinPlas take a trip to

	http://www.phantom.com/~goldstei/winplas.html

where you can download a demo of v2.5
The only trouble we have with the program is making it accessible on
our local network.  This is supposedly a problem with the hardware
key used for copy protection and Rich Goldstein is working on it.
	The other options I have heard about are Vector NT (very
expensive), "Cloning" and "Enhance", none of which I have very much
experience with.  For nice output (but almost no editing ability)
you can grab a demo version of Vector NTI from

	http://www.informaxinc.com/

I hope that this is of some use to you.

		Bernard

[No commercial affiliation with anyone.  I was/am a de facto beta
tester for WinPlas]

Bernard Murray, Ph.D.
bernard at elsie.nci.nih.gov  (National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda MD, USA)
"Accept the pain, Frank." -Dr. Forrester. MST3k (The Unearthly)