Mutually Uncorrelated Primers for DNA-Based Data Storage

We introduce the notion of weakly mutually uncorrelated (WMU) sequences, motivated by applications in DNA-based data storage systems and for synchronization of communication devices. WMU sequences are characterized by the property that no sufficiently long suffix of one sequence is the prefix of the same or another sequence. WMU sequences used for primer design in DNA-based data storage systems are also required to be at large mutual Hamming distance from each other, have balanced compositions of symbols, and avoid primer-dimer byproducts. We derive bounds on the size of WMU and various constrained WMU codes and present a number of constructions for balanced, error-correcting, primer-dimer free WMU codes using Dyck paths, prefix-synchronized and cyclic codes.