Usage of computational software for analysis of human cytomegalovirus specific primers

Basic Local Alignment Search Tool [BLAST] is important software for molecular biologists. We suggested BLAST usage to test HCMV specific primers reliability before being used in diagnostic PCR. 158 HCMV primers were extracted from PubMed articles, and then tested by BLAST against nucleotide sequences database of HCMV and other organisms. These studied primers showed mismatch with all or some HCMV nucleotide sequences; or perfect matching with all HCMV nucleotide sequences, or some nucleotide sequences of other organisms. Using BLAST to test primers could be useful to investigate their specificity, sequences accuracy, ability to detect all HCMV strains, and finally selected genetic target regions