New Trends of Digital Data Storage in DNA

Table 2

Comparison of encryption codes.

	Huffman code	Comma code	Alternate code	Comma-free code	Improved Huffman code	Perfect genetic code
Base-to-character ratio	~2.2	~6	~6	Variable	~3.5	Variable
Economical	Very economical	No	No		Yes
Long term storage	No	Yes	Yes
Error correcting			Yes	Yes	Yes
Protection from mutation		Yes			Yes	No
Isothermal melting temperature		Yes	Yes
Synthetic DNA		Yes	Yes
Special features	Uses the principle of varying the length of symbols used for representation based on the recurrence of a character; Not applicable to numbers and symbols	Consists of fixed length reading frames of 6 bases including the comma, G		Fixed length base frames without commas to separate the frames; Does not consist of identical four bases; Does not have the capability to recover the broken data when a large segment is deleted from a data encoded region	Stores text, images, and music in DNA; Expensive	70% more efficient than the other codes due to the use of a variable code length