Addition of Degenerate Bases to DNA-based Data Storage for Increased Information Capacity

DNA-based data storage has emerged as a promising method to satisfy the exponentially increasing demand for information storage. However, practical implementation of DNA-based data storage remains a challenge because of the high cost of DNA per unit data. Here, we propose the use of eleven degenerate bases as encoding characters in addition to A, C, G, and T, which increases the information capacity (the amount of data that can be stored per length of DNA sequence designed) and reduce the cost of DNA per unit data. Using the proposed method, we experimentally achieved an information capacity of 3.37 bits/character, which is more than twice when compared to the highest information capacity previously achieved. Finally, the platform was projected to reduce the cost of DNA-based data storage by 50%.