For those of you interested in PCR primers and hybridization
probes I would really appreciate your opinions about their
inclusion in biosequence databases. Some of my specific concerns
are as follows:
1. Do you feel primers and probes tend to clutter up a nucleic acid
database and cause unnecessary retrievals when searching for
sequences of much longer length?
2. Because primers and probes are usually designed from known sequence
information often already in the database, is it still justifiable
to include them as additional entries?
3. What applications of primers and probes should justify their
inclusion in a biosequence database, e.g. clinical diagnosis,
taxonomy, evolution, gene mapping, or methods?
4. If you were to search for primers and probes in a biosequence
database what would be most efficient for you? Would some type of
descriptive information be helpful, e.g. their application or
their origin?
Thank you very much for any thoughts you might have on this subject.
Please post your response to ljc55 at cas.org
