Tamper restoration on DNA sequences based on reversible data hiding

Abstract

Nowadays more and more DNA sequences are discovered and most of them are stored in databases of NCBI or other organizations. Once tampered, restoring the entire database usually cost much and researches based on these tampered sequences will cause disastrous consequences. This paper proposes a reversible data hiding method on DNA sequences and a fragile watermarking scheme that is based on that method. By using these methods, tampered area(s) in a DNA sequence can easily be localized. Even further, if the tampering rate is low, the original sequence can be exactly retrieved. Then by sending the retrieved sequence back, the tampered database will be restored. Our method can be applied to an online database. When the client downloads a certain DNA sequence, which may be tampered during transmission, the proposed method can help to check if the sequence is tampered and recover the tampered region.