Shotgun Wedding

by Jed Goldstone, with editorial assistance from Ray Jones and Sarah Bagby

Answer: SEPARATE CHECKS

The title is a reference to shotgun sequencing, a method in which
large chunks of DNA are broken up into smaller, more readily sequenced
fragments such that the beginning of one fragment overlaps the end of
another, and so on.  The fragments are sequenced individually and the
sequences are aligned with the use of the terminal overlaps, forming a
unique "contig" whose sequence is that of the original big chunk.

The 11 sequences given in this puzzle can be assembled into a contig,
with the fragments ordered 7-3-11-4-2-6-8-10-5-1-9.  Feeding the
complete sequence into a nucleotide sequence translator appears to
give a bunch of gibberish, but each end of the contig (reading 5'->3'
or 3'->5') yields SEEKGENEFRAMES (using the single-letter amino acid
codes).  Looking for open reading frames with a gene predictor will
reveal that the longest ORF translates to
MYANSWERISSEPARATECHECKSANDTHERESTISFILLER, giving the answer SEPARATE
CHECKS.

(Other long ORFs are red herrings, reading MAGENTAHERRINGISMYSILLYSAYING,
MINIREDFISHISMYINITIALREPLY, and MYLITTLEREDKIPPERSAIDHEWITHAGRIN.)