Overcoming the High Error Rate of Composite DNA Letters-Based Digital Storage through Soft-Decision Decoding

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Information Science
• Data Storage

Background:

• Composite DNA letters merge nucleotides to increase DNA digital storage (DDS) logical density.
• High error rates in composite letters complicate data retrieval and increase costs.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce Derrick-cp, a novel soft-decision decoding algorithm for DDS.
• Enhance error correction and cost-efficiency in composite letter-based DDS.

Main Methods:

• Developed Derrick-cp algorithm leveraging differential error sensitivities of composite letters.
• Applied soft-decision decoding to improve Reed-Solomon code performance.
• Conducted comparative analyses on existing datasets and simulated experiments.

Main Results:

• Derrick-cp significantly enhances error-correcting performance beyond hard-decision limits.
• Sequencing depth requirement was halved compared to conventional methods.
• Reduced overall costs by up to 22%.

Conclusions:

• Derrick-cp effectively addresses error rates in composite DNA letters for DDS.
• This advancement improves the precision and cost-efficiency of DDS.
• Derrick-cp is crucial for the practical implementation of high-density DNA data storage.