Automation of a primer design and evaluation pipeline for subsequent sequencing of the coding regions of all human Refseq genes

Abstract

Screening for mutations in human disease-causing genes in a molecular diagnostic environment demands simplicity with a view toallowing high throughput approaches. In order to advance these requirements, we have developed and applied a primer designprogram, termed BatchPD, to achieve the PCR amplification of coding exons of all known human Refseq genes. Primer design, insilico PCR checks and formatted primer information for subsequent web-based interrogation are queried from existing online tools.BatchPD acts as an intermediate to automate queries and results processing and provides exon-specific information that issummarised in a spreadsheet format.