SYSTEMS

BOSTON, MA -- Paracel, Inc., a business unit of Celera Genomics (NYSE: CRA), and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced an agreement to market Paracel TranscriptAssembler(TM) and Paracel GenomeAssembler(TM) software on Sun platforms. The announcement was made at the BioITWorld Conference and Expo in Boston, where Paracel is providing live demonstrations of its clustering and assembly software programs on Sun's Blade(TM) 100 Workstation running on the Solaris(TM) 8 Operating Environment. The agreement between Sun and Paracel reflects the ongoing efforts of both companies to offer new and complete bioinformatics solutions to the life sciences research community. ``We expect our Paracel software to add value to Sun's industrial-strength systems. Our benchmark data show excellent performance of Paracel GenomeAssembler and Paracel TranscriptAssembler when running on Sun platforms,'' said Shi-Ping Hsu, Ph.D., general manager of Paracel. ``Sun's highly reliable, scalable and available systems will help Paracel increase the speed of the computational tools they offer to scientists to analyze biological data,'' said Sia Zadeh, Ph.D., group manager, Life Science Group at Sun Microsystems. ``At Sun, we're providing the computing platform that is helping to solve some of the toughest challenges in the life sciences field. Building on our pioneering efforts in the bioinformatics and genomics areas, this agreement with Paracel helps extend our impact by helping customers address their most urgent and timely issues.'' Paracel TranscriptAssembler is a total, high-capacity solution for EST-based transcript reconstruction. It provides a comprehensive pipeline for all steps required to accurately filter, mask, cluster and assemble transcripts. Visualization of assemblies and putative alternative splice forms are provided through intuitive graphical interfaces. Paracel GenomeAssembler is a complete software package for all types of sequence assembly, including large, whole genome shotgun projects. Using Paracel GenomeAssembler, researchers can convert trace data into finished contigs and scaffolds. Sun is working closely with the life science community to ensure that it can deliver technologies that help speed the discovery process. For example, Sun played a significant role in the development of the Interoperable Informatics Infrastructure Consortium (I3C), an international consortium of more than 40 life sciences and information technology organizations. The I3C is developing common protocols and interoperable technologies (specifications) for data exchange and knowledge management for the life sciences community. Sun also created a Life Science Informatics Advisory Council (IAC), which has held two summits where internationally acclaimed scientists and IT specialists from across academia, industry and public agencies have come together to address the escalating computational analysis needs and requirements to support the life sciences community. Currently, Sun is partnering with numerous companies involved in life sciences, including Caprion, Accelrys, DoubleTwist and Vertical*I Holdings, among others. For more information visit www.sun.com or www.paracel.com