title: UniPrime2: a web service providing easier Universal Primer design.
abstract: The UniPrime2 web server is a publicly available online resource which automatically designs large sets of universal primers when given a gene reference ID or Fasta sequence input by a user. UniPrime2 works by automatically retrieving and aligning homologous sequences from GenBank, identifying regions of conservation within the alignment, and generating suitable primers that can be used to amplify variable genomic regions. In essence, UniPrime2 is a suite of publicly available software packages (Blastn, T-Coffee, GramAlign, Primer3), which reduces the laborious process of primer design, by integrating these programs into a single software pipeline. Hence, UniPrime2 differs from previous primer design web services in that all steps are automated, linked, saved and phylogenetically delimited, only requiring a single user-defined gene reference ID or input sequence. We provide an overview of the web service and wet-laboratory validation of the primers generated. The system is freely accessible at: http://uniprime.batlab.eu. UniPrime2 is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Licence.
authors.affiliation: UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Boutros
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Stokes
authors.forename: Michaël
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bekaert
authors.forename: Emma C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Teeling
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000737:chemistry*; D020407:Internet; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers