Construction of GC-Balanced DNA with Deletion/Insertion/Mutation Error Correction for DNA Storage System

Synthetic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a good medium for storing digital data for a long period due to its achievable high data storage density and outstanding longevity. However, synthesizing and sequencing DNA sequences in a DNA storage system are prone to a wide variety of errors, including insertion, deletion and mutation errors. At the same time, it is known that DNA sequences with 50% GC content are less susceptible to errors. This paper presents the construction of a GC-balanced DNA sequence with error correction capability. A systematic single insertion/deletion/substitution error correction code is first proposed and then used to design a GC-balanced scheme for synthesizing DNA sequences. With the proposed method, DNA sequences with exactly 50% GC content are constructed. Such DNA sequences not only have the maximum endurance to errors, but are able to correct both insertion/deletion and mutation of the nucleotide bases. The decoding procedures for the sequences are described and can readily be used in practice. Simulation results show that the proposed GC-balanced DNA sequences can correct base errors adequately.