Browse the manual

Introduction to CLC Main Workbench
- Contact information and citation
- Download and installation
- System requirements
  - Limitations on maximum number of cores
- Workbench Licenses
- Plugins
- Network configuration
- History of the CLC Workbenches
User interface
- View Area
- Zoom functionality in the View Area
- Toolbox and Favorites tabs
  - Toolbox tab
  - Favorites tab
- Processes tab and Status bar
- History and Element Info views
- Workspace
- List of shortcuts
Data management and search
- Navigation Area
- Working with tables
  - Filtering tables
- Customized attributes on data locations
- Searching for data in CLC Locations
  - Quick Search
  - Local Search
User preferences and settings
- General preferences
- View preferences
  - Import and export Side Panel settings
- Data preferences
- Advanced preferences
- Export/import of preferences
- Side Panel view settings
Printing
- Selecting which part of the view to print
- Page setup
- Print preview
Connections to other systems
- CLC Server connection
- AWS Connections
Import/export of data and graphics
- Standard import
  - External files
- Data export
- Export graphics to files
  - File formats
- Export graph data points to a file
- CLC Server data import and export
- Copy/paste view output
Data download
- Search for Sequences at NCBI
  - NCBI search options
  - Handling of NCBI search results
- Search for PDB Structures at NCBI
- Search for Sequences in UniProt (Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL)
  - UniProt search options
  - Handling of UniProt search results
- Sequence web info
Running tools, handling results and batching
- Running tools
  - Running a tool on a CLC Server
- Handling results
- Batch processing
Metadata
- Creating metadata tables
  - Importing metadata
  - Creating a metadata table directly in the Workbench
- Associating data elements with metadata
  - Associate Data Automatically
  - Associate Data with Row
- Working with data and metadata
- Moving, copying and exporting metadata
Workflows
- Creating and editing workflows
- Workflow elements
- Launching workflows individually and in batches
- Advanced workflow batching
  - Batching workflows with more than one input changing per run
  - Multiple levels of batching
- Managing workflows
Viewing and editing sequences
- Sequence Lists
- View sequences
- Working with annotations
- Element information
- View as text
3D Molecule Viewer
- Importing molecule structure files
- Viewing molecular structures in 3D
- Customizing the visualization
  - Visualization styles and colors
  - Project settings
- Tools for linking sequence and structure
- Align Protein Structure
  - Example: alignment of calmodulin
  - The Align Protein Structure algorithm
- Generate Biomolecule
Sequence alignment
- Create an alignment
- View alignments
  - Bioinformatics explained: Sequence logo
- Edit alignments
  - Realignment
- Join alignments
- Pairwise comparison
  - The pairwise comparison table
  - Bioinformatics explained: Multiple alignments
Phylogenetic trees
- K-mer Based Tree Construction
- Create tree
- Model Testing
- Maximum Likelihood Phylogeny
  - Bioinformatics explained
- Tree Settings
- Metadata and phylogenetic trees
General sequence analyses
- Annotate with GFF/GTF/GVF file
- Extract sequences
- Shuffle sequence
- Dot plots
- Local complexity plot
- Sequence statistics
  - Bioinformatics explained: Protein statistics
- Join Sequences
- Pattern discovery
  - Pattern discovery search parameters
  - Pattern search output
- Motif Search
- Create motif list
Nucleotide analyses
- Convert DNA to RNA
- Convert RNA to DNA
- Reverse complements of sequences
- Translation of DNA or RNA to protein
- Find open reading frames
  - Open reading frame parameters
Protein analyses
- Protein charge
- Antigenicity
- Hydrophobicity
  - Hydrophobicity graphs along sequence
  - Bioinformatics explained: Protein hydrophobicity
- Download Pfam Database
- Pfam domain search
- Download 3D Protein Structure Database
- Find and Model Structure
  - Create structure model
  - Model structure
- Secondary structure prediction
- Protein report
- Reverse translation from protein into DNA
  - Bioinformatics explained: Reverse translation
- Proteolytic cleavage detection
  - Bioinformatics explained: Proteolytic cleavage
Sequencing data analyses and Assembly
- Importing and viewing trace data
  - Trace settings in the Side Panel
- Trim sequences
  - Trimming using the Trim tool
  - Manual trimming
- Assemble sequences
- Assemble sequences to reference
- Sort sequences by name
- Add sequences to an existing contig
- View and edit contigs and read mappings
- Reassemble contig
- Secondary peak calling
- Extract Consensus Sequence
- Combine Reports
  - Combine Reports output
Primers and probes
- Primer design - an introduction
  - General concept
  - Scoring primers
- Setting parameters for primers and probes
  - Primer Parameters
- Graphical display of primer information
  - Compact information mode
  - Detailed information mode
- Output from primer design
- Standard PCR
- Nested PCR
- TaqMan
- Sequencing primers
- Alignment-based primer and probe design
- Analyze primer properties
- Find binding sites and create fragments
  - Binding parameters
  - Results - binding sites and fragments
- Order primers
Cloning and restriction sites
- Restriction site analyses
- Restriction enzyme lists
- Restriction Based Cloning
- Homology Based Cloning
- Gateway cloning
- Gel electrophoresis
  - Gel view
RNA structure
- RNA secondary structure prediction
- View and edit secondary structures
- Evaluate structure hypothesis
  - Selecting sequences for evaluation
  - Probabilities
- Structure scanning plot
  - Selecting sequences for scanning
  - The structure scanning result
- Bioinformatics explained: RNA structure prediction by minimum free energy minimization
  - The algorithm
  - Structure elements and their energy contribution
Expression analysis
- Experimental design
- Transformation and normalization
- Quality control
- Feature clustering
  - Hierarchical clustering of features
  - K-means/medoids clustering
- Statistical analysis - identifying differential expression
- Annotation tests
  - Hypergeometric Tests on Annotations
  - Gene Set Enrichment Analysis
- General plots
BLAST search
- Running BLAST searches
  - BLAST at NCBI
  - BLAST against local data
- Output from BLAST searches
- Local BLAST databases
- Manage BLAST databases
- Bioinformatics explained: BLAST
Utility tools
- Extract Annotated Regions
- Create Sequence List
- Update Sequence Attributes in Lists
- Split Sequence List
- Rename Elements
- Rename Sequences in Lists
Appendix
- Graph preferences
- BLAST databases
- Proteolytic cleavage enzymes
- Restriction enzymes database configuration
- Technical information about modifying Gateway cloning sites
- IUPAC codes for amino acids
- IUPAC codes for nucleotides
- Formats for import and export
  - List of bioinformatic data formats
  - List of graphics data formats
- Gene expression annotation files and microarray data formats
- Translation Tables
- Custom codon frequency tables
- Matrices for alignment calculation
Bibliography

System requirements

The system requirements of CLC Main Workbench are:

Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022
Mac: macOS 11, 12, and 13
Linux: RHEL 7 and later, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and later. The software is expected to run without problem on other recent Linux systems, but we do not guarantee this. To use BLAST related functionality, libnsl.so.1 is required.
64 bit operating system
1 GB RAM required
2 GB RAM recommended
1024 x 768 display required
1600 x 1200 display recommended

System requirements for 3D viewers

Requirements
- A graphics card capable of supporting OpenGL 2.0.
- Updated graphics drivers. Please make sure the latest driver for the graphics card is installed.
Recommendations
- A discrete graphics card from either Nvidia or AMD. Modern integrated graphics cards (such as the Intel HD Graphics series) may also be used, but these are usually slower than the discrete cards.
3D rendering is only supported when the CLC Main Workbench in installed on the same machine the viewer is opened on: indirect rendering (such as x11 forwarding through ssh), remote desktop connection/VNC, and running in virtual machines is not supported.

Requirements for CLC data locations are provided in Adding locations.

Subsections

Limitations on maximum number of cores