Primer3Plus

Oligonucleotide primers are widely used in various molecular biology techniques like DNA sequencing and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Since a primer serves as the starting point for DNA replication, specific binding of the oligonucleotide to the target sequence on the template strand is essential for a successful experiment. The binding specificity of a primer is determined by several of its properties, like the melting temperature (Tm), GC-content and self complementarity. Designing primers is usually done with the help of computer programs such as the one made available here, Primer3Plus (Untergasser, A., Nijveen, H., Rao, X., Bisseling, T.,  Geurts, R., and Leunissen, J. 2007. Primer3Plus, an enhanced web interface to Primer3. Nucleic Acids Res. 35(Web Server issue): W71–W74.). See the program’s Help text for additional detail.

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