Glossary

B

Beacon

A type of DNA biosensor that emits a signal, such as light, when it encounters a particular feature such as a complementary sequence on Target DNA or RNA.   A beacon usually contains a fluorophore on one terminus of the probe and a quencher on the other terminus.   The beacon alone usually forms into a hairpin in which the ends of the probe form a stem.   When the beacon binds to its intended target, the ends become unbound, thus separating the fluorophore and quencher and emitting light.

Blast

In Visual OMP it is possible to Blast primers or probes against a selected local database while designing these primers or probes.  This way the probes or primers you are designing will not pick up any other sequences in the database you specified.  In the other Blast-feature of Visual OMP it is also possible to Blast any sequence against a local database or a database of the NCBI.  

Boulder I/O

Boulder I/O is a common simple format used in computer science to generalize I/O or input/output.  Each "keyword" is followed directly by an equal sign and a "value"  For example, magnesium concentration may be defined as:

MgConc=0.01

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