New DNA data storage system tested
The DNA used as a data archive? It’s not just science fiction! A pair of researchers from Columbia University and the New York Genome Center (NYGC) succeeded in the experiment, they enclosed a set of data in a small molecule of DNA.
A reliable and long-lasting system
Humanity could soon generate more data than it can handle with current technologies, SSD hard drives, could in the future be an obsolete technology, nothing more than a story to tell to grandchildren about how before everything was more mechanical.
“DNA doesn’t degrade over time like cassettes and Cds, and it won’t become obsolete, if it ever does, we’ll have bigger problems.”
DNA is also an ideal storage medium because it is ultra-compact and can last for hundreds of thousands of years if stored in a cool, dry place, as evidenced by the recent recovery of DNA from the bones of a 430,000-year-old human ancestor found in a cave in Spain.
Erlich and his colleague Dina Zielinski, an associate scientist at NYGC, chose six files to encode and write in DNA: a complete operating system, a 1895 French film, “arrival of a train at La Ciotat,” a $50 Amazon voucher, a computer virus, a Pioneer license plate and one of the information from a 1948 study.
The experiment
The files were compressed into a master file and then split into short strings of binary code consisting of one and zero. Using an algorithm, they then randomly packaged such packets into a series of so-called droplets, and then associated one and zero of the binary information contained in each drop to the four nucleotide bases of DNA (A, G, C and T). Later, a barcode was added for each droplet to help the future reassembly of files. In total, a digital list of 72,000 strands of DNA was generated, which was sent in a text file to a San Francisco startup, specializing in transforming digital data into biological data.
Two weeks later, the two researchers received a vial with a grain of DNA molecules inside it: to retrieve the files, they used modern sequencing technology to read DNA strands and then software to translate genetic code back into binary code, thus retrieving their files without any error.
One day we might have a technology much more like ourselves than we ever imagined. We ourselves, perhaps through the implementation of this DNA, could be much more like robots.