A Coding Scheme for Nucleic Acid Memory (NAM)

Abstract

The global demand for digital data is projected to be greater than the supply of semiconductor grade silicon in 2040 [1]. When combined with the need to archive information [2], nucleic acids are being explored as an alternative memory material [1-7]. According to a recent study, the information density of nucleic acid memory (NAM) is one thousand times greater than flash memory and has the ability to last for hundreds of years [1]. Presented here is an algorithm for converting digital data into unique DNA sequences for glacial storage. Biologically inspired, our coding scheme maps hexadecimal characters to sequences of three DNA nucleotides. This mapping avoids repeating sequences and start codons, which could have adverse effects. We were able to encode and decode various file types without error.