A DNA-based encoding and retrieving method for Jiaguwen

Jiaguwen or Oracle bone script, which is inscribed on ox bones or tortoise shells of the Shang dynasty in ancient China, is one of the oldest mysterious characters in the world. Along with the rapid development of computer science and information technology, people are eager to deal with Jiaguwen characters just like the way they deal with modern characters. Unfortunately, Jiaguwen characters have such a long history that it is very difficult to pick out its strokes and, it is too hard to understand the exact meaning of the characters. Hence, the traditional stroke coding or spelling coding methods can not be used to encode Jiaguwen characters without any improving. DNA-based computing is a new computing paradigm with many advantages. A DNA-based encoding method is proposed to reduce the number of Jiaguwen characters in coincident codes. The encoding method extracts more features of both the characters to be retrieved and the characters in the standard library. Furthermore, a DNA-based algorithm to retrieve Jiaguwen is presented using the basic operations of Adleman-Lipton Model. The correctness of the algorithm is proved and the complexity of the algorithm is analyzed.