OligoArk 🧬

AI-Native DNA Archival Storage — an open-source research framework for adaptive DNA encoding, software channel simulation, graph-assisted reconstruction, empirical policy learning, and explainable heterogeneous storage tiering.

What the name means: “Oligo” refers to oligonucleotides—short DNA strands—and “Ark” represents safeguarding information for the future. Together, OligoArk expresses the idea of preserving digital information in DNA for long-term archival storage.

Research status: alpha. OligoArk produces DNA-like sequence encodings and software simulations. It does not claim wet-lab validation, present-day commercial DNA-storage economics, or physical-media performance.

Why OligoArk

DNA data storage research has demonstrated high-density archival concepts, random access, error correction, and long-horizon preservation. A practical software research stack also needs to decide when a future DNA tier might be appropriate, how encoding/redundancy should adapt to channel conditions, and how noisy/duplicated reads should be reconstructed. OligoArk treats these questions as one reproducible system rather than only mapping bits to A/C/G/T.

Research contributions

OligoArk v0.2 separates four testable research layers:

1. Explainable heterogeneous storage tiering — evaluates SSD, object archive, tape, and an explicitly experimental dna_future tier from retention, access, mutability, durability, retrieval urgency, redundancy, energy, and user-supplied normalized economic assumptions.
2. Adaptive DNA codec policy — changes chunk size, Reed–Solomon strength, XOR erasure grouping, and sequence masking from simulated channel conditions and durability/overhead/retrieval objectives.
3. Graph-assisted strand reconstruction — tries verified direct decoding first, then builds an implicit similarity graph using q-gram prefiltering + Levenshtein scoring and generates deterministic consensus reads before retrying checksum-verified recovery.
4. Empirical policy learning — a dependency-free instance-based learning baseline ranks codec policies from prior channel/policy observations. It requires no proprietary model and always coexists with deterministic heuristics.

The repository also contains an independently implemented fountain-style seeded XOR/peeling baseline for redundancy experiments. It is not represented as the published DNA Fountain implementation.

Architecture

flowchart LR
  A[File / bytes] --> B[Chunker]
  B --> C[Reed-Solomon ECC]
  C --> D[Adaptive reversible mask]
  D --> E[DNA strand framing]
  E --> F[Software archive]
  F --> G[Channel simulator]
  G --> H[Direct verified decode]
  H -->|insufficient| I[Similarity graph + consensus]
  I --> J[Decode + XOR erasure recovery]
  H -->|sufficient| J
  J --> K[SHA-256 verification]

  L[Channel profile] --> M[Deterministic codec policy]
  N[Policy observations] --> O[Empirical policy model]
  M --> B
  O --> B

  P[Workload profile] --> Q[Explainable tiering]
  R[User economic assumptions] --> Q

See docs/architecture.md for module-level details.

Install

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # Windows PowerShell: .venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m pip install -U pip
pip install -e ".[dev,api,bench]"

The core package has no mandatory third-party runtime dependency. FastAPI, plotting, and development tools are optional extras.

Quick start

printf 'OligoArk demo data\n' > demo.txt
oligoark archive demo.txt --output demo.oligoark.json
oligoark inspect demo.oligoark.json
oligoark recover demo.oligoark.json --output recovered.txt
cmp demo.txt recovered.txt

archive reports measured software facts such as strand count, encoded nucleotide count, GC statistics, homopolymer maximum, logical bits/nucleotide, and SHA-256. These are software encoding measurements, not physical synthesis claims.

Simulate errors and reconstruct reads

oligoark simulate demo.oligoark.json \
  --substitution 0.001 \
  --dropout 0.01 \
  --duplicate 0.20 \
  --seed 7 \
  --output reads.txt

oligoark recover-reads \
  demo.oligoark.json reads.txt \
  --similarity-threshold 0.90 \
  --output recovered-from-reads.txt

The recovery report states whether direct decoding succeeded or graph reconstruction was needed. Recovery is accepted only after the original SHA-256 is reproduced.

Adaptive codec recommendation

oligoark policy \
  --substitution 0.01 \
  --deletion 0.002 \
  --dropout 0.08 \
  --durability-priority 0.9 \
  --storage-overhead-priority 0.1

Storage-tier recommendation

oligoark recommend \
  --retention-years 100 \
  --accesses-per-year 0.1 \
  --mutability 0.0 \
  --retrieval-urgency 0.1 \
  --durability-priority 1.0 \
  --energy-priority 0.8 \
  --redundancy-priority 0.8 \
  --cost-priority 0.5

The default economics are deliberately neutral across tiers; OligoArk does not invent vendor pricing or future DNA costs. Real normalized inputs can be supplied through the Python API, REST API, or --economics-json. For example:

{
  "storage_cost_index": {"ssd": 0.8, "object_archive": 0.3, "tape": 0.2, "dna_future": 0.5},
  "retrieval_cost_index": {"ssd": 0.1, "object_archive": 0.4, "tape": 0.7, "dna_future": 0.9}
}

Lower normalized values mean lower assumed cost. These values are user inputs, not prices asserted by OligoArk.

Python SDK

from oligoark import ArchiveConfig, archive_bytes, archive_statistics, recover_bytes

payload = b"long-lived research artifact"
archive = archive_bytes(payload, ArchiveConfig(rs_nsym=12))
print(archive_statistics(archive).to_dict())
recovered = recover_bytes(archive)
assert recovered == payload

Empirical policy-learning baseline

from oligoark import EmpiricalPolicyModel, PolicyObservation

model = EmpiricalPolicyModel().fit(observations)
recommendation = model.recommend(target_channel)
print(recommendation.policy)

observations must come from explicitly labeled simulated or measured experiments. The model is transparent instance-based learning, not a pretrained black box.

REST API

uvicorn oligoark.api:app --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000

Open /docs for the generated OpenAPI UI. Endpoints include:

• GET /health
• POST /encode
• POST /recover
• POST /recover-reads
• POST /simulate
• POST /recommend
• POST /policy

Runtime settings can be supplied via OLIGOARK_LOG_LEVEL, OLIGOARK_RECONSTRUCTION_THRESHOLD, and OLIGOARK_MAX_API_PAYLOAD_BYTES. See docs/configuration.md.

Reproducible benchmark

python benchmarks/run_benchmark.py

The benchmark writes:

• benchmark-results/results.json
• benchmark-results/results.csv
• benchmark-results/metadata.json
• benchmark-results/recovery_by_regime.png when Matplotlib is installed
• benchmark-results/overhead_by_regime.png when Matplotlib is installed

Metadata records the OligoArk version, Python version, platform, deterministic seed, payload size, payload SHA-256, and claim scope.

Current deterministic software-simulation finding

With seed 2026 and an 8 KiB deterministic payload, the v0.2 benchmark showed:

For the 1% substitution case, the adaptive policy increased encoded size from 47,468 nt to 57,024 nt while changing the deterministic result from failure to successful SHA-256-verified recovery. This is a software simulation result, not evidence about any physical synthesis or sequencing platform. Indel/dropout failures are intentionally retained as documented research gaps rather than hidden by claims.

See docs/benchmarking.md for interpretation rules.

Tests and quality gates

pytest --cov=oligoark --cov-report=term-missing
ruff check .
mypy src/oligoark
python -m build
python -m compileall -q src tests examples benchmarks
python examples/end_to_end.py
python examples/noisy_recovery.py
python examples/policy_learning.py

The test suite includes unit, integration, API, CLI, reconstruction, ECC, policy-learning, archive-validation, and Hypothesis property-based tests. CI runs supported Python versions independently, enforces at least 80% coverage, builds the package and Docker image, and runs all examples. Tag pushes matching v* build installable release artifacts in a separate release workflow.

Scientific assumptions and limitations

• The base codec is a reversible 2-bit mapping wrapped in protected frames; it is not claimed to be capacity-optimal.
• GC/homopolymer scoring is a transparent mask-selection heuristic, not a biochemical synthesis model.
• Reed–Solomon protects frame bytes; XOR parity currently supports one erasure per parity group.
• The simulator uses independent substitution/insertion/deletion/dropout/duplication probabilities. Real channels can be correlated and platform-specific.
• The graph baseline uses q-gram prefiltering, Levenshtein similarity, medoids, and same-length majority consensus. It is not an alignment-aware state-of-the-art decoder and currently remains weak on indels.
• The dna_future storage tier is scenario analysis only. It is not a statement that DNA is presently cheaper, faster, or operationally superior to SSD/object/tape.
• Economic defaults are neutral. Production decisions require externally sourced and time-appropriate cost, energy, durability, and retrieval assumptions.
• The reference API is a research service, not a hardened multi-tenant production system.

Research roadmap

1. Alignment-aware and graph-neural reconstruction for insertion/deletion-heavy channels.
2. Candidate-policy search trained on reproducible simulation grids and eventually published physical datasets.
3. Pluggable synthesis/sequencing channel models calibrated to specific published datasets.
4. Additional constrained codecs and rateless/fountain baselines under one benchmark protocol.
5. Sensitivity analysis for user-supplied cost/energy assumptions across 10/50/100/500-year horizons.
6. Rust acceleration for codec, edit distance, q-gram indexing, and large-read clustering hot paths.
7. Optional real synthesis/sequencing adapters isolated behind interfaces so simulation results cannot be confused with wet-lab evidence.

Prior work and attribution

OligoArk is independently implemented and does not vendor or copy another DNA-storage repository. Relevant foundations include:

• Church, Gao & Kosuri (2012), Next-generation digital information storage in DNA, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1226355.
• Goldman et al. (2013), Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA, Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature11875.
• Grass et al. (2015), Robust Chemical Preservation of Digital Information on DNA in Silica with Error-Correcting Codes, Angewandte Chemie International Edition. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201411378.
• Erlich & Zielinski (2017), DNA Fountain enables a robust and efficient storage architecture, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaj2038.
• Yazdi, Gabrys & Milenkovic (2017), Portable and Error-Free DNA-Based Data Storage, Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-05188-1.
• Organick et al. (2018), Random access in large-scale DNA data storage, Nature Biotechnology. DOI: 10.1038/nbt.4079.

See docs/research.md for research framing and claim boundaries.

Security

OligoArk parses untrusted archive-like input and performs potentially expensive reconstruction. Do not expose the reference API directly to untrusted networks without authentication, rate limiting, request limits, and deployment hardening. See SECURITY.md.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md, especially the requirement to label results as measured software result, simulation result, external published result, or hypothesis.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.