https://jeltsch.org/en/tags/serialcloner/Recent content in SerialCloner on Michael’s DomainHugoen-usCopyright © 2002 - 2026 Michael Jeltsch.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:18:18 +0300https://jeltsch.org/en/snapgene_simply_the_best_dna_manipulation_software/Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000https://jeltsch.org/en/snapgene_simply_the_best_dna_manipulation_software/<p>Our lab has been using different software packages to plan, document and visualize DNA constructs. Among those that we liked a lot for a long time were Textco&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.textco.com/gene-construction-kit.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">GeneConstructionKit&nbsp; <svg class="svg-inline--fa fas fa-up-right-from-square fa-2xs" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 512 512" overflow="visible"><use href="#fas-up-right-from-square"></use></svg></a> (GCK) and <a href="http://www.scied.com/pr_cmpro.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Clone Manager (Professional)&nbsp; <svg class="svg-inline--fa fas fa-up-right-from-square fa-2xs" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 512 512" overflow="visible"><use href="#fas-up-right-from-square"></use></svg></a> . The latter runs unfortunately only under Windows. However, since several of our computers run <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Ubuntu Linux&nbsp; <svg class="svg-inline--fa fas fa-up-right-from-square fa-2xs" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 512 512" overflow="visible"><use href="#fas-up-right-from-square"></use></svg></a> , we did run GCK versions 2.5 and 3 using <a href="https://www.winehq.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">WINE&nbsp; <svg class="svg-inline--fa fas fa-up-right-from-square fa-2xs" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 512 512" overflow="visible"><use href="#fas-up-right-from-square"></use></svg></a> (a compatibility layer that allows us to run native Windows programs under Linux). However, with the upgrade to version 4, GCK became unusably slow under WINE and we were looking for a replacement. We contacted the developers of GCK, but they apparently were either not willing or able to help us. I suppose that the codebase of GCK is probably more than 20 years old and for that reason nobody dares to touch it. Just around that time, <a href="http://www.snapgene.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">SnapGene&nbsp; <svg class="svg-inline--fa fas fa-up-right-from-square fa-2xs" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" role="img" viewBox="0 0 512 512" overflow="visible"><use href="#fas-up-right-from-square"></use></svg></a> was released and it fulfilled almost all of our requirements:</p>