PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Javier Estrada
AU  - Teresa Ruiz-Herrero
AU  - Clarissa Scholes
AU  - Zeba Wunderlich
AU  - Angela H. DePace
TI  - SiteOut: an online tool to design binding site-free DNA sequences
AID  - 10.1101/029645
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 029645
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/10/22/029645.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/10/22/029645.full
AB  - DNA-binding proteins control many fundamental biological processes such as transcription, recombination and replication. A major goal is to decipher the role that DNA sequence plays in orchestrating the binding and activity of such regulatory proteins. To address this goal, it is useful to rationally design DNA sequences with desired numbers, affinities and arrangements of protein binding sites. However, removing binding sites from DNA is computationally non-trivial since one risks creating new sites in the process of deleting or moving others. Here we present an online binding site removal tool, SiteOut, that enables users to design arbitrary DNA sequences that entirely lack binding sites for factors of interest. SiteOut can also be used to delete sites from a specific sequence, or to introduce site-free spacers between functional sequences without creating new sites at the junctions. In combination with commercial DNA synthesis services, SiteOut provides a powerful and flexible platform for synthetic projects that interrogate regulatory DNA. Here we describe the algorithm and illustrate the ways in which SiteOut can be used; it is publicly available at https://depace.med.harvard.edu/siteout/.