Picky is an optimal oligo microarray design program that identifies probes that are very unique and specific to input sequences based on thermodynamic calculations. Its calculations are also controlled by parameters set by the users including optimal probe length range, ideal percentage of guanine and cytosine content, minimum target and nontarget melting temperature separation, salt concentration and the cutoff length to which a target probe is allowed to match any non-target sequence. Picky has exceptional computational capability and is user friendly. Macintosh, Unix and PC versions are all available. Academic users can obtain free-use Picky license. Commercial licenses are also available.

Announcing Picky 2.1!

Picky 2.1 includes several useful new oligo microarray design features:

1. Design shared oligos among very similar genes, those cannot have unique oligos based on thermodynamics.
2. Nonlinear salt concentration sensitive temperature landscape calculation, allowing more precise oligo selection.
3. The ability to load third party oligo sets and examine their quality using Picky's thermodynamic equations; and
4. Special oligo selection range limits, to specify a certain region on your sequences to select oligos.

For a complete list of the various new features added in Picky 2.1, check out its Change Log.

Note that all Picky reference oligo sets provided on this website were previously created using Picky 2.0. It is recommended that the new Picky 2.1 be used to redesign any production oligo sets using the hybridization salt concentration from your microarray protocol in order to capture the true benefit of the more precise salt concentration dependant oligo calculation in Picky 2.1.

How to Download Picky Demo

1. Input your email into the box at the bottom of the Registration section on this page.
2. Press "Enter" or "Return" on your keyboard. You should be taken to a confirmation screen.
3. Check your email inbox in a moment. Your should get an email from us with a password. If you do not receive the email, it may have been trapped by your spam filter. Check it there before you email us.
4. Go to the Demo Download page and input your username and password to download Picky Demo. Your username is the email you registered with us and the password is the one you got in the email.
5. Click on "Submit" and you should be taken to the software download page where you can download Picky Demo.
6. For more information on how to obtain the Full Version Picky, please see instructions in the download page.

Registration

Please register your email address with us to obtain your download password. This is necessary for several good reasons:

1. We can send you email notices when newer versions of Picky become available;
2. We can provide our grant agency anonymous usage statistics of our software. This helps keep us in business so we can continue to improve Picky to serve you better; and
3. We filter all incoming inquiry emails against our registration list to prevent spams. Therefore if you would like to send us a question in email, you need to register. Otherwise, we will not receive your email at all.

Your email address will only be used for these purposes. If you have forgotten your password, you can retrieve it by entering your email again. Your password will be automatically emailed to you shortly, and then you can go to our download page to download Picky Demo.

Documentation

Two tutorials were developed to help users better understand Picky. These tutorials introduce the features of Picky 2.0 and better acquaint users with its functionality. Users can quickly gain first hand experience of Picky and begin oligo microarray design after completion of these tutorials:

Picky Guided Tour: Acquaints users with a thorough explanation of Picky user interface and functionality. [Download PDF Version]

Picky Animated Tutorial (Flash): Demonstrates step-by-step guide to Picky functionality using a sample Arabidopsis File from GenBank.

Related Papers

PICKY: oligo microarray design for large genomes
Bioinformatics Advance Access published on June 4, 2004
Bioinformatics, Nov 2004; 20: 2893 - 2902
Supplementary Information

Questions & Comments

Please send all questions, bug reports, commercial license inquiry and wish lists to Note that you must register your email first so your emails will not be filtered out as spams.