This is a Python script to encode/decode arbitrary computer files into DNA sequences. It is a straight implementation of a method published in this Nature’s paper. The details of the method can be found in the Supplementary Information report. Another version of report can be found here. The source code organization follows the article steps and nomenclature, so it should be easy to understand.

Install it using pip:

$ sudo pip install file2dna

The installed script will be called dna and accepts four types of operations passed as arguments together with the file name:

$ dna -h
usage: dna [-h] [-e | -s | -d | -j] file

positional arguments:
  file        File to be encoded/decoded.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  -e          encode file and save it as .dna
  -s          encode file and save it as .splitted.zip
  -d          decode .dna file and save as .decoded
  -j          decode .splitted.zip file and save it as .decoded

As an example, we can decode one the files encoded by the authors of the paper. Suppose you have cloned this repo with its examples folder:

$ dna -d examples/DNA_versions/wssnt10.txt.dna

To see the decoded file:

$ cat examples/DNA_versions/wssnt10.txt.decoded

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