CloneAssistant 1.0: a stand-alone software for automated cloning primer design.

"CloneAssistant 1.0" is a stand-alone software compatible with the current Windows operating systems, which can automatically design cloning primers with full consideration of the sequence information of vectors and genes, cloning strategies, the principles of primer design, reading frames, position effects, and enzymatic reaction conditions for users. Five internal XML (extensible markup language) databases [restriction enzymes, plasmids, universal buffers, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) protection bases, and an MCS (multiple cloning site) double digest interference database] were established to serve as the basic support for "CloneAssistant 1.0". The primer pairs designed are sorted according to the difficulty of the follow-up experiments. Once a primer pair is selected by the user, detailed experimental guidance for this primer pair will be provided. In addition, "CloneAssistant 1.0" can be used for restriction map analysis, ORF (open reading frame) finding, sequence alignment and complementary analysis, translation, restriction enzyme and universal buffer queries, and isocaudamer analysis. "CloneAssistant 1.0" makes gene clone design much easier, and it can be freely downloaded from http://bis.zju.edu.cn/clone.