Coding in 2D: Using Intentional Dispersity to Enhance the Information Capacity of Sequence-Coded Polymer Barcodes.

Area of Science:

• Polymer Chemistry
• Molecular Engineering
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Development of novel molecular data storage systems is crucial for information technology.
• Polymer-based materials offer potential for high-density information encoding.
• Existing methods for molecular sequencing can be complex and time-consuming.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and synthesize polymer-based molecular barcodes for data storage.
• To develop a 2D analytical approach for decoding information stored in polymers.
• To demonstrate the feasibility of encoding and retrieving binary messages using molecular barcodes.

Main Methods:

• Synthesis of uniform oligo(alkoxyamine amide)s via orthogonal solid-phase chemistry.
• Creation of intentional dispersity in oligomer mixtures to generate a 1st dimension fingerprint.
• Analysis of monomer sequence using tandem mass spectrometry (2nd dimension sequencing).
• Electrospray mass spectrometry for measuring dispersity and mass distribution.

Main Results:

• Successfully synthesized uniform oligomers containing monomer-coded binary messages.
• Demonstrated a 2D analytical approach combining mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry.
• Recovered a 4-byte extended ASCII message encoded on six uniform oligomers.
• Recovered a 3-byte sequence encoded on five uniform oligomers.

Conclusions:

• The 2D approach enables the design of polymer-based molecular barcodes.
• This method allows for the successful encoding and retrieval of binary information.
• Polymer molecular barcodes offer a promising platform for future data storage applications.