  We introduce the notion of weakly mutually uncorrelated (WMU) sequences,
motivated by applications in DNA-based data storage systems and for
synchronization of communication devices. WMU sequences are characterized by
the property that no sufficiently long suffix of one sequence is the prefix of
the same or another sequence. WMU sequences used for primer design in DNA-based
data storage systems are also required to be at large mutual Hamming distance
from each other, have balanced compositions of symbols, and avoid primer-dimer
byproducts. We derive bounds on the size of WMU and various constrained WMU
codes and present a number of constructions for balanced, error-correcting,
primer-dimer free WMU codes using Dyck paths, prefix-synchronized and cyclic
codes.
