DNA Data Storage

DNA Data Storage DNA Data Storage DNA Data StorageOur precious selfies, snaps of our felines, and shots of our cappuccinosto say elendhing of our texts, emails, and songshave created a massive data set. However efficient our current memory technology, that data takes up real physical space. The 44 trillion gigabytes were likely to create by 2020 would fill six stacks of tablets that each would reach the moon.The harte nuss is not limited to the trivial. Hospitals and intelligence agencies have huge and ever-growing quantities of data that need a safe, durable, and smaller home.Now, researchers at the University of Washington in collaboration with Microsoft have proven it can all be made into DNA. Rewritten as base pairs, a warehouse of todays data would fit into a thimble.Already they have managed to encode 200 megabytes (which happened to include a video by the band OK Go, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a hundred books from Project Gutenberg) into the molecule of lif e. Weve done the round of encoding the data into DNA, then reading it back, and then validating it to make sure there are no errors, says Luis Ceze, a professor of computer science and engineering at the university, and the lead researcher for the project. Weve done this multiple times encoded a bunch of data and recovered it perfectly, bit by bit.Digital data from more than 600 basic smartphones can be stored in the faint pink smear of DNA at the end of this test tube. Image Tara Brown/University of WashingtonThat perfection of the decoding is the feat that makes the seemingly futuristic technique practical. Despite being incredibly reliableit being the basis of supporting complex systems like living organismsthe process of writing and reading DNA is relatively noisy, says Ceze. To overcome that noisiness, the team used sophisticated error correcting algorithms and schemes.Data coded into adenine, cytosine, guanine, andthymine is likely to be as well preserved as it would be on a h ard drive. DNA can be very, very durable, says Ceze. If you dehydrate it, and keep it away from water, away from light, and away from heat, which is what you do with electronics in general, it lasts for centuries if not for millennia.The equipment with which Ceze and his team decoded their data is the same used in genomics and medical diagnostics. And its thanks to the incredible advances in DNA sequencing over the past decadefor those purposesthat Ceze was able to read his double helical storage. Cost has plummeted and speed has increased at a rate faster than Moores law. The cost of DNA sequencing has dropped 100 million fold in the last nine years, says Ceze.But in terms of storage, its still on the costly side about a thousand dollars a megabyte. Thats, you know, millions of times more expensive than computer memory, says Ceze. But for a proof of concept, its not too bad. And, with that proof now in the bag, the team will begin to focus on automation and bringing the cost way do wn. There might be a market for a very expensive storage as long as it has the right properties, says Ceze. But our focus, to be honest, is to push the price down to levels that are comparable to archival technologies today. Were just scratching the surface. Theres a lot to do.Michael Abrams is an independent writer.But our focus, to be honest, is to push the price down to levels that are comparable to archival technologies today.Prof. Luis Ceze, University of Washington