The present invention concerns methods and nucleic acid based reagents useful in modulating gene expression in a variety of applications, including use in therapeutic, veterinary, agricultural, diagnostic, target validation, and genomic discovery applications. Each mapper node scans the split to count an absolute support value of each candidate itemset for current search level, and passes the candidate itemsets and their support values to reducer nodes in the cluster. The non-Newtonian fluid is capable of supporting the substrate.