Allele-specific primers for KASP, PACE, ASQ and generic AS-PCR. Biallelic SNPs, InDels and complex haplotypes, with automatic tail selection and Tm balancing. An allele-sizing mode trades the fluorophore for a gel: 5′-tails space the allele products into a ladder, so the genotype is read off band length.
TaqMan, MGB and molecular-beacon probes for quantitative allelic discrimination — allele-specific pairs with matched Tms and minimal cross-reactivity, with a multiplex mode.
Rare somatic mutations down to 0.1% allele frequency. Designs the competitive triplet — allele-specific primer, allele-specific probe and common counter-primer — in both orientations, with multiplexing.
Single-base-extension primers for multiplex SNP and InDel genotyping on capillary electrophoresis. Also supports BAC fingerprinting and CpG-methylation minisequencing.
Ligation-dependent half-probe pairs (LPO + RPO) with stuffer sequences and universal tags, for copy-number, SNP and InDel detection by capillary electrophoresis or, for up to 1000 targets, by sequencing.
Flanking primers for microsatellite genotyping by capillary-electrophoresis fragment sizing, with economical universal-tail fluorescent labelling and automatic multiplex dye/size assignment.
General-purpose design engine covering standard, inverse, multiplex, TaqMan/MGB-probe, bisulphite and RPA assays. The quantitative-fluorescent mode generates STR-flanking primers for dosage and copy-number analysis.
Consensus primers designed from a multiple sequence alignment of two or more sequences: every 3′-end fully conserved across all inputs, with optional IUPAC-degenerate 5′-ends for pan-specific amplification of divergent targets.
Cas9 and Cas12a guides with activity and specificity scoring, an off-target search across the sequences you supply, HDR/ssODN donors carrying a silent PAM-blocking change, the primers that screen the edit, prime-editing pegRNAs with a Tm-matched PBS, and base-editing windows with bystander prediction.
Collateral-cleavage detection assays: Cas12a and Cas13a crRNAs with allele-specific synthetic-mismatch discrimination, RPA pre-amplification primers with a T7 promoter where the enzyme needs a transcript, and the quenched ssDNA/ssRNA reporter for fluorescence or lateral flow.
Toehold-mediated strand-displacement exchange probes for high-specificity SNP/allele discrimination. Tunes the probe to a near-thermoneutral reaction and scores single-base mismatches with measured nearest-neighbour thermodynamics.
Virtual PCR against sequences you supply: where each primer, probe, miRNA or gRNA binds, which pairs give an amplicon and at what size, and which bindings are off-target. Mismatches are allowed, so a primer that anneals imperfectly is still found.
| Capability | KASP / AS-PCR | qPCR probes | castPCR | SNaPshot SBE | TSDR probes | MLPA | QF-PCR | STR / SSR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SNP genotyping | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| InDel detection | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| STR / microsatellite | — | — | — | ± | — | — | ✔ | ✔ |
| Multiplex (≥ 10 loci) | ± | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ± | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Haplotype phasing | ✔ | — | — | ± | — | — | — | — |
| Methylation analysis | — | — | ✔ | ✔ | — | ✔ | — | — |
| qPCR instrument required | ± | ✔ | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — |
| Capillary electrophoresis | — | — | — | ✔ | — | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Low-cost plate reader | ✔ | — | — | — | ✔ | — | — | — |
| Rare-allele detection (≥ 0.1%) | — | — | ✔ | — | ± | — | — | — |
| Dosage / CNV analysis | — | ± | ± | — | — | ✔ | ✔ | ± |
If DigitalGens contributed to your work, please cite the accompanying paper. A full list of related publications is on the References & Citation page.
Citation details will be added on publication.
- Released under the GNU GPL v3.0 — free to use, study, modify and redistribute. See Licence.
- Source code and issue tracker: github.com/rkalendar/PCRtools.
- Contact: ruslan.kalendar@digitalgens.org — bug reports are faster on GitHub Issues.
- Documentation: DigitalGens guide, troubleshooting.
- All computation runs locally in your browser; sequences are never transmitted to any server. See Data & privacy.