Dna how much data

Further, running data centers takes huge amounts of energy. In short, we are about to have a serious data-storage problem that will only become more severe over time. An alternative to hard drives is progressing: DNA-based data storage. Data can be stored in the sequence of these letters, turning DNA into a new form of information technology.

It is already routinely sequenced read , synthesized written to and accurately copied with ease. DNA is also incredibly stable, as has been demonstrated by the complete genome sequencing of a fossil horse that lived more than , years ago. And storing it does not require much energy.

But it is the storage capacity that shines. DNA can accurately stow massive amounts of data at a density far exceeding that of electronic devices. The simple bacterium Escherichia coli , for instance, has a storage density of about 10 19 bits per cubic centimeter, according to calculations published in in Nature Materials by George Church of Harvard University and his colleagues.

The prospect of DNA data storage is not merely theoretical. And researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research have developed a fully automated system for writing, storing and reading data encoded in DNA. Along with density, a second differentiator as a storage medium is its durability. But if you think about it, scientists have been able to extract intact DNA from fossils, dating back millions of years.

Another thing to note is modern SSD drives have only a limited lifespan of 10 years or less; in fact, a 6 year study of Google data centers by the University of Toronto, discovered SSD drives have a lifespan that is actually even less than this. It probably comes as no surprise, but Microsoft is heavily backing this emerging technology. Whilst their technology appears to be slightly behind ETH based on the volume of data successfully stored and recalled , they are continuing to invest in its development as this press release shows.

DNA can store digital information in a space that is orders of magnitude smaller than datacenters use today. In this press release, they also try and quantify the potential of this storage medium:. Research continues at pace. There are however, a few hurdles researchers still need to breakthrough. How long until this technology becomes mainstream is yet to be seen. But at the rate that our data production is growing, it had better be sooner rather than later.

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Aside from the cost, the other major bottleneck in using DNA to store data is the difficulty in picking out the file you want from all the others.

To pull out a specific file, that primer is added to the sample to find and amplify the desired sequence. However, one drawback to this approach is that there can be crosstalk between the primer and off-target DNA sequences, leading unwanted files to be pulled out. As an alternative approach, the MIT team developed a new retrieval technique that involves encapsulating each DNA file into a small silica particle. To demonstrate this approach in a cost-effective manner, the researchers encoded 20 different images into pieces of DNA about 3, nucleotides long, which is equivalent to about bytes.

They also showed that the capsules could fit DNA files up to a gigabyte in size. The primers are labeled with fluorescent or magnetic particles, making it easy to pull out and identify any matches from the sample. This allows the desired file to be removed while leaving the rest of the DNA intact to be put back into storage.

For their barcodes, the researchers used single-stranded DNA sequences from a library of , sequences, each about 25 nucleotides long, developed by Stephen Elledge, a professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School.

If you put two of these labels on each file, you can uniquely label 10 10 10 billion different files, and with four labels on each, you can uniquely label 10 20 files. Army Research Office. Previous item Next item.

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