title: PRIMEGENS-v2: genome-wide primer design for analyzing DNA methylation patterns of CpG islands.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  DNA methylation plays important roles in biological processes and human diseases, especially cancers. High-throughput bisulfite genomic sequencing based on new generation of sequencers, such as the 454-sequencing system provides an efficient method for analyzing DNA methylation patterns. The successful implementation of this approach depends on the use of primer design software capable of performing genome-wide scan for optimal primers from in silico bisulfite-treated genome sequences. We have developed a method, which fulfills this requirement and conduct primer design for sequences including regions of given promoter CpG islands.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The developed method has been implemented using the C and JAVA programming languages. The primer design results were tested in the PCR experiments of 96 selected human DNA sequences containing CpG islands in the promoter regions. The results indicate that this method is efficient and reliable for designing sequence-specific primers.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The sequence-specific primer design for DNA meth-ylated sequences including CpG islands has been integrated into the second version of PRIMEGENS as one of the primer design features. The software is freely available for academic use at http://digbio.missouri.edu/primegens/.
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department and Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
authors.forename: Gyan P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.forename: Juyuan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Huidong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D018899:CpG Islands / Q000235:genetics*; D019175:DNA Methylation; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers