ABSTRACT
PFRED a software application for the design, analysis, and visualization of antisense oligonucleotides and siRNA is described. The software provides an intuitive user-interface for scientists to design a library of siRNA or antisense oligonucleotides that target a specific gene of interest. Moreover, the tool facilitates the incorporation of various design criteria that have been shown to be important for stability and potency. PFRED has been made available as an open-source project so the code can be easily modified to address the future needs of the oligonucleotide research community. A compiled version is available for downloading at https://github.com/pfred/pfred-gui/releases/tag/v1.0 as a java Jar file. The source code and the links for downloading the precompiled version can be found at https://github.com/pfred.
Subject(s)
Computational Biology/methods , DNA Primers/genetics , Oligonucleotides, Antisense/genetics , Algorithms , Gene Library , Genomics , Oligonucleotides/genetics , RNA, Small Interfering/genetics , Software , User-Computer InterfaceABSTRACT
Hierarchical Editing Language for Macromolecules (HELM version 2.0) is a molecular line notation similar to SMILEs but specifically for communicating and managing biopolymer structures. The HELM project, part of the Pistoia Alliance nonprofit organization, has been tasked to develop and promote HELM as a global exchange format and recently released version 2.0 of the specification. Here we will describe the specifics of the HELM v2.0 notation along with the large ecosystem of software to support HELM-based structure management. We will highlight a recent open-source software and database for HELM monomers and a new, simpler approach to deploying a large complicated molecular management system.
Subject(s)
Biopolymers/chemistry , Computational Biology/methods , Software , Databases, Factual , InternetABSTRACT
When biological macromolecules are used as therapeutic agents, it is often necessary to introduce non-natural chemical modifications to improve their pharmaceutical properties. The final products are complex structures where entities such as proteins, peptides, oligonucleotides, and small molecule drugs may be covalently linked to each other, or may include chemically modified biological moieties. An accurate in silico representation of these complex structures is essential, as it forms the basis for their electronic registration, storage, analysis, and visualization. The size of these molecules (henceforth referred to as "biomolecules") often makes them too unwieldy and impractical to represent at the atomic level, while the presence of non-natural chemical modifications makes it impossible to represent them by sequence alone. Here we describe the Hierarchical Editing Language for Macromolecules ("HELM") and demonstrate its utility in the representation of structures such as antisense oligonucleotides, short interference RNAs, peptides, proteins, and antibody drug conjugates.
Subject(s)
Biological Products/chemistry , Biological Products/classification , Drug Design , Humans , Oligonucleotides, Antisense/chemistry , Peptides/chemistry , Proteins/chemistry , RNA, Small Interfering/chemistry , Terminology as TopicABSTRACT
This paper describes ArQiologist, a Web-based tool that integrates chemical, analytical, biological, and computational data to facilitate decision support for lead optimization at ArQule. It features an easy-to-use graphical query builder that allows queries to be saved, reused, and shared by researchers. Query results can be viewed with built-in data browsers or exported with structures to external applications such as Microsoft Excel or Spotfire for further analysis.
