The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) has recently published improvements to GBuilder (once called GenomeBuilder), a program for analysing DNA-sequence clusters and assemblies. It aims to help researchers to combat the sequence-analysis problems posed by expressed sequence tags (ESTs) because of their poor sequence quality, high rates of chimerism, high redundancy and alternatively spliced forms, which cause alignment mismatches. Sequence data can be analysed and visualized in GBuilder in many ways. For example, aligned sequences can be colour coded according to annotation properties or to highlight vector sequence.

GBuilder's key feature is that it uses CORBA (common object request broker architecture) to allow it to connect to database and analysis-application servers at EBI (or elsewhere where the same CORBA interfaces are used). This allows it to access different data sources and applications on the internet, or at a user's own site, and to integrate this additional data and functionality into itself.

GBuilder runs from the EBI, but the program's main developer, Juha Muilu, recommends that users download the program for their own use for several reasons, one being that the EBI-run version cannot provide all the program's features. This might prevent the less computer literate from making the most of this program, however, it allows the computer savvy to customize GBuilder to access their favourite databases by providing the program's configuration file with the appropriate URLs. Future additions to the program are in the pipeline, such as more sequence analysis tools.