MRC: A High Density Encoding Method for Pratical DNA-based Storage

DNA data storage has become one of the most high-profile techniques for long-term data storage. In the process of synthesizing, storing, amplifying, and sequencing of DNA sequences, there are constraints on the form of the DNA sequences, namely repeated bases avoidance, proper GC content, and special DNA fragments avoidance. Previous studies met the constraints either at the cost of information density or too complicated for implementation. In this paper, we propose an encoding method called MRC (Mixed Radix Coding) that can effectively satisfy those constraints and achieve the almost theoretically optimal information density as well. MRC is very easy to implement in practice and extend to accomodate other DNA coding constraints.