UGENE Version 50.0 Released for the Project’s 16th Anniversary

The milestone release of UGENE 50.0 is out, featuring improvements and updates to several popular tools, including Primer3 for primer design, the plasmid annotation database PlusMapper, and the Python interpreter. Two new tools have also been added: Primer-BLAST for querying the NCBI database with selected primers, and Mfold for predicting DNA/RNA secondary structures. The package’s stability and interface have also been enhanced. A new video podcast visually showcases the latest features.

In just three days, the new release has already been downloaded nearly 2,000 times. With each release, the number of downloads increases steadily. The previous version, UGENE 49.1, was downloaded 39,000 times, while version 46.0, one of the most popular past versions, was downloaded 28,000 times. The number of scientific citations related to research conducted with UGENE has reached 3,000, according to Google Scholar.

In terms of geographical distribution, the United States leads in the number of users, followed by Russia, Germany, China, and users from 140 other countries around the world.