About the Sequence Workbench

A single browser-based tool that turns a pasted DNA or RNA string into five answers at once: sequence statistics, the reverse-complement and its variants, translation in three forward reading frames, all open reading frames across all six frames, and restriction-site mapping. Every computation runs locally — no sequence, error list, or result is ever sent to a server. Input is validated against the strict alphabet (A, C, G, T/U plus the 11 IUPAC ambiguity codes); any other character is listed in a side error panel with its 1-based position, and computation continues over the longest valid prefix.

Five modes, one input

• Stats — length, base counts, GC%, GC-skew, AT%, molecular weight (ssDNA / dsDNA / RNA), and Tm via the Wallace rule (≤ 14 nt) or SantaLucia 1998 nearest-neighbour model (longer ACGT-only sequences).
• Reverse complement — IUPAC-aware complement, reverse, and reverse-complement, each with a 5′→3′ / 3′→5′ label, copy, and download as FASTA.
• Translate — three forward reading frames, codon-by-codon table with start/stop highlighting, and a concatenated protein. All 27 NCBI genetic codes are selectable, including the standard code, the vertebrate, invertebrate, echinoderm, and yeast mitochondrial codes, the ciliate and alternative-yeast nuclear codes, and the more recent additions 25–33 (SR1, Pachysolen, Karyorelict, Condylostoma, Mesodinium, Peritrich, Blastocrithidia, Balanophoraceae, Cephalodiscidae UAA-Tyr).
• ORF finder — all six reading frames (3 forward, 3 reverse-complement), start-codon → next in-frame stop, configurable minimum length, nested-ORF-aware span reporting, and an NCBI ORFfinder-style linear SVG map above the tabular list. Hover a row → the corresponding block highlights; hover a block → the row highlights.
• Restriction sites — 100+ Type II restriction enzymes drawn from a REBASE export, with a search/filter input, select-all / deselect-all, a linear/circular toggle (the circular mode wraps the sequence end-to-end so sites spanning the origin are detected), and the cut position / overhang annotation per hit.

Click-to-insert examples

Eight bundled sequences: a lac promoter fragment (60 bp) for stats, an eGFP CDS start for translation, a multi-ORF synthetic construct for the ORF finder, a 200 bp multi-site construct with the most-clicked-on-Addgene restriction sites, a 16S rRNA fragment for the RNA reverse-complement, a 20-mer PCR primer for Wallace Tm, an mRNA-like RNA for translation, and an IUPAC-degenerate sequence for the strict-alphabet check.

Built-in cheatsheet

Open the cheatsheet drawer for a quick reference: the 16 IUPAC codes with their matches and meanings, all 27 genetic codes, the standard 64-codon table (rendered as a 4×4×4 grid with start/stop highlighted), and the 20 most-used restriction enzymes.

Privacy and limits

The page is statically generated; the React component is hydrated with client:load. No localStorage, no analytics, no network egress. The input is bounded at 1 MB; larger inputs are rejected with a clear notice. Live recompute is debounced (150 ms for small inputs, 500 ms for inputs above 100 KB).