Biomod/2011/Caltech/DeoxyriboNucleicAwesome/Sequence Design

=Sequence Design=

Design Process
After having designed our mechanism at the domain level, we needed to fill in our domains with actual sequences. To start, we picked specific lengths for each of our domains. We decided to stick with the general precedent that toeholds be 6 nucleotides in length, then decided that any domain that was part of a probe be 20 nucleotides in length, as this length is both not wastefully long and long enough to ensure that no spontaneous dissociation would occur. We then decided that any domain longer than a toehold, but not part of the probe system should be 15 base pairs in length, as this would not spontaneously dissociate, but could be easily strand displaced.

After these numbers were decided, we consulted a list of 20 nucleotide sequences that are known to be relatively inert and chose sequences from this list to fill in our 20 and 15 nucleotide domains. We used NUPACK and a little trial and error to find our 7 necessary relatively inert toeholds. We then ran a number of simulations in NUPACK to check for unwanted secondary structures and interactions in our designed sequences.

Probe Domains
The length of these sequences is 20 nucleotides. † The lp domain is 27 nucleotides long.

Toehold Domains
The length of these sequences is 7 nucleotides. † The a2' domain is a subset of the a2 domain and is 4 nucleotides long. ‡ Toeholds cgd and wgd are the same. This does not change the function of our system because they are never used in the same solution together.

Other Domains
The length of these sequences is 15 nucleotides.

List of Strands
A star(*) denotes the complement of a domain.