FECDO-Flexible and Efficient Coding for DNA Odyssey

Summary DNA has been pursued as a compelling medium for digital data storage during the past decade. While large-scale data storage and random access have been achieved in artificial DNA, the synthesis cost keeps hindering DNA data storage from popularizing into daily life. In this study, we proposed a more efficient paradigm for digital data compressing to DNA, while excluding arbitrary sequence constraints. Both standalone neural networks and pre-trained language models were used to extract the intrinsic patterns of data, and generated probabilistic portrayal, which was then transformed into constraint-free nucleotide sequences with a hierarchical finite state machine. Utilizing these methods, a 12%-26% improvement of compression ratio was realized for various data, which directly translated to up to 26% reduction in DNA synthesis cost. Combined with the progress in DNA synthesis, our methods are expected to facilitate the realization of practical DNA data storage.