Source:
IEEE Trans. NanoBioscience (2009)
Abstract:
Using DNA to store digital signals, or data in general, offers
significant advantages when compared to other media. The DNA
molecule, especially in its double stranded form, is very stable,
compact, and inexpensive. In the past, we have shown that DNA can be
used to store and retrieve digital signals encoded and stored in
DNA. We have also shown that DNA hybridization can be used as a
similarity criterion for retrieving digital signals encoded and
stored in a DNA database. Retrieval is achieved through
hybridization of `query' and `data' DNA molecules. In this paper, we
present a mathematical framework to simulate single query and
parallel query scenarios and to estimate hybridization efficiency.
Our framework allows for exact numerical solutions as well as closed
form approximations under certain conditions. Similarly to the
digital domain, we define a DNA signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) measure
to assess the performance of the DNA-based retrieval scheme in terms
of database size and source statistics. With approximations, we
show that the SNR of any finite size DNA-based database is upper
bounded by the SNR of an infinitely large DNA-based database that
has the same source distribution. Computer simulations are presented
to validate our results.
