Redundancy in fixed-length DNA sequences remains unresolved (initially posed)

Determine whether short fixed-length DNA sequences exhibit redundancy analogous to human language, including multiple redundant motifs within single sequences that encode the same methylation information.

Background

The paper investigates redundancy in fixed-length DNA segments (41 bp) by mapping sequences into a linguistic feature space and mining motifs indicative of 6mA methylation. The authors present evidence that single sequences can store multiple redundant motifs, aiding stability under environmental noise.

Before presenting their findings, they explicitly note that whether short fixed-length DNA exhibits redundancy is an unresolved question, which their analyses aim to address.

References

This raises the question: does short fixed-length DNA, as the “language of life”, also exhibit redundancy? While this remains unresolved, redundancy phenomena—such as the “many-to-one” relationship between codons and amino acids, multiple gene copies, and genetic compensation mechanisms—contribute to the stability of life processes.

— DNA and Human Language: Epigenetic Memory and Redundancy in Linear Sequence (2503.23494 - Yang et al., 30 Mar 2025) in Introduction