BARCOSEL is a web tool for selecting an optimal set of barcode sequences. User must provide a set of candidate barcodes from which the defined number of barcodes is selected. BARCOSEL utilizes mixed-integer linear programming software lpsolve.

More information and options can be found under button "Advanced" and hovering mouse over icons.

General description with full information here.

Enter barcode candidate sequences in FASTA format:


or upload a FASTA file:
Example barcode candidate set

Number of barcodes to be selected:

Initial barcodes FASTA file:

Type of distance: Hamming Levenshtein

Minimum distance:

Time limit in seconds:

Maximum depth of the search:

Basis crash:



Panu Somervuo, Patrik Koskinen, Peng Mei, Liisa Holm, Petri Auvinen, Lars Paulin (2018) BARCOSEL: a tool for selecting an optimal barcode set for high-throughput sequencing. BMC Bioinformatics 19:257.