Running out of space on your phone? Don’t upgrade your cloud storage subscription yet. Scientists in China have discovered that images, text files, and other digital data can be stored on DNA strands fused to a 330-foot-long (100-meter) plastic strip that can hold the equivalent of 3 billion songs.
This is a far cry from the device Microsoft developed in 2016, which managed to pack 200 megabytes of data into a small amount of DNA “much smaller than the tip of a pencil.”
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DNA is a long, double-helical molecule made from a unique sequence of four chemical bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T), which together code for an organism’s genetic information. Similarly, all digital files are ultimately a combination of ones and zeros, which a computer can interpret as a PDF, JPEG, or other file type.
If each base represents a specific pattern of 0s and 1s, a piece of artificial DNA can be encoded to contain the binary code of a digital file. This type of molecule is not derived from living organisms but is assembled in the laboratory by joining prefabricated nucleotide building blocks in the desired sequence.
This is what scientists did before printing encoded DNA onto long tapes. When the solution containing the strands was passed over the strip, the strands were adsorbed onto the polymer surface.
“Due to its high storage density, DNA has the potential to become a next-generation information storage medium,” the authors wrote in their study. “DNA tape’s roll-like configuration efficiently maximizes the space utilization of the material, making it portable, and increasing its length expands the number of available areas and storage capacity.”
Each section of tape has a barcode printed on it that indicates which files are held on it. A camera mounted on a cassette player-like machine then scans the tape as it moves between two rollers, locating the file and dipping that spot into a basic solution that releases the DNA. The DNA can then be sequenced and the base sequence translated into code for a file.
Storing data for hundreds, if not thousands of years
Researchers hope DNA tape could provide a solution to the proliferation of digital data, which has been greatly exacerbated by the boom in generative artificial intelligence (AI). They estimate that a fragment about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) long can store up to 362,000 terabytes of data. This equates to approximately 60 billion photos. For reference, laptops often come with 0.5-2 TB of storage, while smartphones usually come with at least 128 GB or 256 GB of storage.
In addition to having a large storage capacity, the data encapsulated in DNA tapes could potentially be stored for long periods of time, the researchers said. That’s because the DNA strands are stored within a metal-organic framework (MOF) (a molecular-scale cage made of zinc ions) that provides a protective layer.
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DNA is known to retain its shape for centuries, and researchers have found that tape can store data for more than 345 years at room temperature and about 20,000 years at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). Even if it breaks, the DNA tape can be fixed using clear adhesive tape, the researchers said.
In addition to identifying and extracting the DNA strand corresponding to a particular file, the reader can encapsulate new DNA strands into MOF and place them on tape. It can also autonomously detect when a DNA strand is in the wrong barcode section and move it to the correct section.
Although DNA data storage has been extensively studied for many years, this is one of the first solutions to demonstrate elegant “file system” behavior, meaning that files can be retrieved, modified, and deleted. It also does not require a combination of manual and instrumental steps, but instead operates robotically and can handle both “cold” (rarely accessed) as well as “warm” (repeatedly accessed) data.
However, challenges still remain. The actual synthesis of DNA remains expensive, time-consuming, and requires large equipment. Additionally, the process of restoring a single file from tape takes approximately 25 minutes. Therefore, in its current state, DNA cassette players do not provide a viable method of archiving digital data.
That said, the scientists hope their research will lead to technologies that can store large amounts of both warm and cold data in a compact form, reducing reliance on the large data centers currently in use.
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