  Given a string $w$ over a finite alphabet $\Sigma$ and an integer $K$, can
$w$ be partitioned into strings of length at most $K$, such that there are no
\emph{collisions}? We refer to this question as the \emph{string partition}
problem and show it is \NP-complete for various definitions of collision and
for a number of interesting restrictions including $|\Sigma|=2$. This
establishes the hardness of an important problem in contemporary synthetic
biology, namely, oligo design for gene synthesis.
