DNA Staples: An oligonucleotide library for data storage and computing

Abstract

DNA offers exceptional information density and stability, making it a promising medium for long-term data storage. However, the high cost of DNA synthesis and data retrieval remain key barriers to large-scale deployment. In this paper, we present DNA staples, a multipurpose library of short single-stranded DNA sequences that enables the encoding of arbitrary digital data by enzymatic assembly. Flexible encoding schemes allow the same presynthesized strand library to be used across applications, significantly reducing synthesis requirements while supporting diverse data representations. Using a restricted library also confers inherent error correction. In addition to storage, the library enables creation of computational DNA modules that perform highly parallel operations directly on stored data. This framework provides a cost-efficient approach to molecular data storage and supports integrated storage-computation at the DNA level.