Two of the core BioPerl developers, Jason Stajich and Chris Fields, were interviewed by FLOSS Weekly.  The interview is now available as an MP3 on the FLOSS Weekly website; several streaming versions (including podcast) are also available.

BioPerl 1.6.1 is now available for ActivePerl as a PPM, instructions for downloading can be found on the BioPerl wiki. This has been tested only for ActivePerl 5.10 and above, so any feedback with older versions of BioPerl would be greatly appreciated.

Running a bit late on this, so just a quick note that the first alphas for BioPerl-Run, BioPerl-DB, and BioPerl-Network have been uploaded to CPAN: BioPerl-Run BioPerl-DB BioPerl-Network They can also be downloaded from the BioPerl website: http://bioperl.org/DIST/RC/ This is the first run where we’ve switched to a regular Module::Build installation, so expect some initial bumps!

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of BioPerl 1.6.1, the latest release of BioPerl’s core code.

Biopython 1.51 onward includes support for Sanger, Solexa and Illumina 1.3+ FASTQ files in Bio.SeqIO, which allows a lot of neat tricks very concisely. For example, the tutorial ( PDF) has examples finding and removing primer or adaptor sequences. However, because the Bio.SeqIO interface revolves around SeqRecord objects there is often a speed penalty.

The release of Biopython 1.52 earlier this week marked the end of an era, it was our last release using CVS for source code control. As of now, Biopython is using a git repository, hosted on github.com who kindly provide git hosting for open source projects free of charge. The BioRuby project have been using github for some time, so we are in good company.

We are pleased to announce the availability of Biopython 1.52, a new stable release of the Biopython library. It may only have been one month since the last release, but in that time we’ve added enough useful features to warrant a new release. In particular, Biopython 1.52 includes more substantial support for population genetics, and adds new functions that will be useful for people working with next generation sequencing.

As per Peter’s recent post we are using this space to show of a couple of the new features in Biopython 1.52 before it is released.

The forthcoming release of Biopython 1.52 will include a couple of nice improvements to the Bio.SeqIO module, and here we’re going to introduce the new index function. This will of course be covered in the Biopython Tutorial & Cookbook ( PDF) once this code is released.

We are pleased to announce the release of BioRuby 1.3.1. This new release fixes many bugs existed in 1.3.0. Here is a brief summary of changes. Refactoring of BioSQL support. Bio::PubMed bug fixes. Bio::NCBI::REST bug fixes. Bio::GCG::Msf bug fixes. Bio::Fasta::Report bug fixes and added support for multiple query sequences. Bio::Sim4::Report bug fixes. Added unit tests for Bio::GCG::Msf and Bio::Sim4::Report. License of BioRuby is clarified.

We are pleased to announce the release of Biopython 1.51.This new stable release enhances version 1.50 (released in April) by extending the functionality of existing modules, adding a set of application wrappers for popular alignment programs and fixing a number of minor bugs.