en آمار زیستی Biostatistics پژوهشي Research <div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Background: </strong>Deoxyribozymes (Dzs) can play a role as gene expression inhibitors at mRNA level. Among Dzs, the 10-23 deoxyribozyme has significant potentials for treatment of diseases. Designed Dz includes a catalytic core made of 15 deoxyribonucleotides and two binding arms consisted of 6-12 nucleotides for site specific binding to target RNA and hydrolysis. The enzyme has characteristic features for cleavage of the RNA target between an unpaired purine (A, G) and a paired pyrimidine (C or U). In this study, 10-23 Dz is designed for the coding region of the &alpha;-peptide of a <em>lacZ</em> gene.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Material and Methods: </strong>The primary sequence of a plasmid with &alpha;-complementation ability was taken from addgene database. To confirm sequence validity, ExPASy was used to analyze related ORFs for the retrieved sequence. The ORF with identical sequence to &alpha;-peptide was selected in the reverse complement sequence. Subsequently, the secondary structure of the &alpha;-peptide was analyzed in DINAMelt web server and Mfold software. Then the intended target site was selected inside the coding region of the &alpha;-peptide. The Dzs sequence was designed for the target site with nucleotide binding arms.<br> <strong>Results and conclusion:</strong> The resulted Dz in this study can be used as a promising catalytic DNA inside bacterial cells for blue-white screening. Criteria such as biological stability and catalytic rate of such enzymes must be evaluated in vivo and in vitro.</div> 10-23 deoxyribozyme, gene expression, beta-galactosidase gene 28 33 http://rmm.mazums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-751-2&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Nasrin al-Sadat Ahmadi nasrine_ahmadi@yahoo.com 10031947532846006635 10031947532846006635 No Cellular and Molecular Biology Division; Department of Biology; Faculty of Sciences, University of Isfahan; Isfahan; Iran Abolghasem Esmaeili aesmaeili@sci.ui.ac.ir 10031947532846006636 10031947532846006636 Yes Cellular and Molecular Biology Division; Department of Biology; Faculty of Sciences, University of Isfahan; Isfahan; Iran Fatemeh Javadi Zarnaghi fa.javadi@sci.ui.ac.ir 10031947532846006637 10031947532846006637 No Cellular and Molecular Biology Division; Department of Biology; Faculty of Sciences, University of Isfahan; Isfahan; Iran