The software package ARB and the SILVA rRNA databases
What is ARB/SILVA?
ARB (latin, "arbor" = tree) is a free, fully-integrated package of cooperating software tools for the classification and phylogenetic analysis of any kind of sequence data, as well as for the design of high-quality molecular probes.
ARB is under continuous development since nearly 15 years at the TU-Munich in the group of Dr. Wolfgang Ludwig (
www.arb-home.de).
With more than 1,000 citations (as of March 2009) since its publication in NAR in 2004 (Nuc. Acids Res. 2004; Vol. 32, No. 4, p.1363-1371), ARB represents a "blockbuster" among the scientific software tools.
SILVA (latin, = forest) represent the official ribosomal RNA databases of the ARB project since January 2007.
SILVA (www.arb-silva.de) was initiated by the group of Prof. Dr. Frank Oliver Glöckner at the MPI-Bremen in cooperation with Ribocon and published in late 2007 (Nuc. Acids Res. 2007; Vol. 35, No. 21, p. 7188-7196).
Professional Support & Solutions
ARB and SILVA are academic projects and consequently only limited resources are available for maintenance and general user support. This is problematic because an estimated number of more than 10,000 users worldwide ask for a professional infrastructure to cope with the numerous requests and various interests.
In 2005 Ribocon has taken over this responsibility. The Ribocon team has a strong background in microbial diversity analysis, phylogenetic reconstruction and probe design, and we are highly experienced with the usage of ARB, also on the system level. We are working in close cooperation with the ARB developer team at the TU-Munich and we are part of the SILVA database project at the MPI-Bremen.
The following services are currently offered:
Automatic Linux plus ARB Installation DVD 3.0
In case of additional requirements just contact 
arb(at)ribocon.com
Please also have a look at our Sequence Analysis Services including in-depth phylogenetic analysis.