title: An iterative method for selecting degenerate multiplex PCR primers.
abstract: Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping is an important molecular genetics process, which can produce results that will be useful in the medical field. Because of inherent complexities in DNA manipulation and analysis, many different methods have been proposed for a standard assay. One of the proposed techniques for performing SNP genotyping requires amplifying regions of DNA surrounding a large number of SNP loci. To automate a portion of this particular method, it is necessary to select a set of primers for the experiment. Selecting these primers can be formulated as the Multiple Degenerate Primer Design (MDPD) problem. The Multiple, Iterative Primer Selector (MIPS) is an iterative beam-search algorithm for MDPD. Theoretical and experimental analyses show that this algorithm performs well compared with the limits of degenerate primer design. Furthermore, MIPS outperforms an existing algorithm that was designed for a related degenerate primer selection problem.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Souvenir
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Buhler
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Stormo
authors.forename: Weixiong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000737:chemistry*; D005838:Genotype; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers