title: Selecting optimal oligonucleotide primers for multiplex PCR.
abstract: We investigate the problem of designing efficient multiplex PCR for medical applications. We show that the problem is NP-complete by transformation to the Multiple Choice Matching problem and give an efficient approximation algorithm. We developed this algorithm in a computer program that predicts which genomic regions may be simultaneously amplified by PCR. Practical use of the software shows that the method can treat 250 non-polymorphic loci with less than 5 simultaneous experiments.
authors.affiliation: INRIA-Rocquencourt, Le Chesnay, France. Pierre.Nicodeme@inria.fr
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nicodème
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Steyaert
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D017931:DNA Primers; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers