If just encoding text, one way is to convert each letter of the alphabet into a three-letter code. Using three bases, such as A, C, and T, gives 27 combinations—enough for the English alphabet plus a space—with a code such as AAA = A, AAC = B, and so on (1 in graphic below). However, researchers often want to encode more than just text, so most current methods instead first translate data into binary code—the language of 1s and 0s used in electronic media. Using binary, the four bases of DNA could theoretically store up to two bits of information per nucleotide, with a code such as A = 00, C = 01, and so on (2).
In reality, though, biochemical features of nucleic acids make some combinations of bases more desirable than others. Particularly problematic are homopolymers—long strands of the same nucleotide—which are difficult to write and read using ...
