On the possibilities of error-detecting codes in nucleic acid molecules

Error-detecting codes have been known to mathematicians and to electrical engineers for over ten years. In general, such codes utilize an additional orparity bit for purposes of detecting errors by the addition of all positive binary bits or “1’s” occurring in any code word. However, since the process of addition is required for such code detection, it is not surprising that these codes have not been applied to the nucleic acid molecule. In 1962, P. I. Hershberg (Trans. I.R.E., CS-10, 280–4, 1962) outlined a categorical constraint which permitted the realization of a class of error-detecting codes which did not require parity bits. This class of codes is applied to the nucleic acid molecule in the present paper.