  Designing short DNA words is a problem of constructing a set (i.e., code) of
n DNA strings (i.e., words) with the minimum length such that the Hamming
distance between each pair of words is at least k and the n words satisfy a set
of additional constraints. This problem has applications in, e.g., DNA
self-assembly and DNA arrays. Previous works include those that extended
results from coding theory to obtain bounds on code and word sizes for
biologically motivated constraints and those that applied heuristic local
searches, genetic algorithms, and randomized algorithms. In particular, Kao,
Sanghi, and Schweller (2009) developed polynomial-time randomized algorithms to
construct n DNA words of length within a multiplicative constant of the
smallest possible word length (e.g., 9 max{log n, k}) that satisfy various sets
of constraints with high probability. In this paper, we give deterministic
polynomial-time algorithms to construct DNA words based on derandomization
techniques. Our algorithms can construct n DNA words of shorter length (e.g.,
2.1 log n + 6.28 k) and satisfy the same sets of constraints as the words
constructed by the algorithms of Kao et al. Furthermore, we extend these new
algorithms to construct words that satisfy a larger set of constraints for
which the algorithms of Kao et al. do not work.
