Create your own Primer Database.nsub from an Excel spreadsheet

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way of converting that huge primer collection you have into a format that MacVector can use? Well, luckily there is! There is a utility called “Primer Converter” that you can download from our website.

To use the utility you first need to get your primers into Microsoft Excel (or other spreadsheet application) organized into three columns – “Name”, “Sequence”, “Comment”, where the comment is optional. If your primers have tails, make sure they are in lower case. Finally, export the data as a comma separated value (.csv) file.

Now run Primer Converter, select your source file and you’ll get a screen something like this

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The mismatches control lets you decide how many mismatches can be present and still consider the primer to “bind”. You can override this in the Analyze | Primer Database Search… dialog. Finally, click on the Save In MacVector format button – this will save the data as an .nsub file which you can use instead of the default file for Primer Database Searches.

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