Bio-Constrained Codes with Neural Network for Density-Based DNA Data Storage

DNA has evolved as a cutting-edge medium for digital information storage due to its extremely high density and durable preservation to accommodate the data explosion. However, the strings of DNA are prone to errors during the hybridization process. In addition, DNA synthesis and sequences come with a cost that depends on the number of nucleotides present. An efficient model to store a large amount of data in a small number of nucleotides is essential, and it must control the hybridization errors among the base pairs. In this paper, a novel computational model is presented to design large DNA libraries of oligonucleotides. It is established by integrating a neural network (NN) with combinatorial biological constraints, including constant GC-content and satisfying Hamming distance and reverse-complement constraints. We develop a simple and efficient implementation of NNs to produce the optimal DNA codes, which opens the door to applying neural networks for DNA-based data storage. Further, the combinatorial bio-constraints are introduced to improve the lower bounds and to avoid the occurrence of errors in the DNA codes. Our goal is to compute large DNA codes in shorter sequences, which should avoid non-specific hybridization errors by satisfying the bio-constrained coding. The proposed model yields a significant improvement in the DNA library by explicitly constructing larger codes than the prior published codes.