DoubleTwist, Inc. and Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) today announced an exclusive distribution 
agreement under which Hitachi has agreed to purchase licenses to the DoubleTwist suite of 
bioinformatics software products, including DoubleTwist.com™ and Prophecy™ , for marketing
and distribution to the Asia-Pacific region. 

Hitachi will host the DoubleTwist software at their facilities and provide bioinformatics 
services to customers wishing to access the DoubleTwist products through a virtual private 
network (VPN).  Hitachi also offers enterprise information technology solutions that will 
help pharmaceutical company purchasers of the DoubleTwist software to integrate those 
products into their existing technology platforms. 

"We are delighted to extend our existing distribution alliance with Hitachi to bring the 
entire suite of DoubleTwist products to the Asia-Pacific Market," said Stephen Sanders, 
VP Worldwide Sales for DoubleTwist, Inc.  

"Our alliance with DoubleTwist provides us with a comprehensive suite of bioinformatics 
products that allows us to become a market leader in the fast growing life science 
industry in the Asia-Pacific region," said Dr. Hiroya Taguchi, Chief Executive Officer 
of the Life Science Group at Hitachi, Ltd. 

Under the agreement, Hitachi will become a distributor and value-added reseller for the 
following DoubleTwist products:
•DoubleTwist.com™ - a powerful, secure and comprehensive online research 
  environment that integrates more than 25 disparate genomic databases and enables 
  users to analyze genomic information and store analysis results using Web-based tools.
•Prophecy™ - an extensively annotated database of human genomic DNA sequences 
  and software for data interpretation and visualization.
•GeneForest - a concise, annotated database of expressed sequences and software for 
  data interpretation and visualization.
•Clustering and Alignment Tools (CAT) - software product for processing and analyzing 
  large genetic sequence databases.

DoubleTwist, Inc. is a leading provider of genomic information and bioinformatics tools 
to the life sciences industry.  The Company's mission is to empower life scientists by 
simplifying and accelerating genomic research.  DoubleTwist.com provides an online 
research environment that enables the life scientist to perform sophisticated genomic 
analysis without requiring bioinformatics expertise.  DoubleTwist's research environment 
is accessible by subscription through DoubleTwist.com, as well as through licenses to 
components of DoubleTwist.com's research environment for use on a customer's internal 
computer network.

Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global 
electronics companies, with fiscal 2000 (ended March 31, 2000) consolidated sales 
of 8,001 billion yen ($75.5 billion). The company manufactures and markets a wide range 
of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and 
industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's 
Web site at URL:http://www.hitachi.co.jp.

For more information, contact DoubleTwist, Inc. at (510) 628-0100 or e-mail info-
pr@doubletwist.com or visit URL:http://www.doubletwist.com.