DNA and Data
DNA has four different bases that can be arranged in any order along the backbone of the molecule. If the bases were assigned a value of either 1 or 0, just like binary, information could be recorded within the molecule. Mikael Nieman, a Soviet scientist, proposed using DNA as a storage medium back in 1964. The idea was first put into practice in 1988, but only on a very small scale. Recently, a great deal of information has been stored in DNA using binary.
At Harvard University, a team led by Sriram Kosuri and George Church has encoded a book in DNA. The bases of A and C stood for the zeros used in binary and the bases G and T stood for ones. The book was nearly 54,000 words long, totaling 643 kilobytes. Another team, led by Nick Goldman at the European Bioinformatics Institute, stored 739 kilobytes containing a photo, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Watson and Crick’s description of DNA, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. However, while the first team used the typical binary that computers use, the second team used a base 3 system to encode the data.
At Harvard University, a team led by Sriram Kosuri and George Church has encoded a book in DNA. The bases of A and C stood for the zeros used in binary and the bases G and T stood for ones. The book was nearly 54,000 words long, totaling 643 kilobytes. Another team, led by Nick Goldman at the European Bioinformatics Institute, stored 739 kilobytes containing a photo, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Watson and Crick’s description of DNA, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. However, while the first team used the typical binary that computers use, the second team used a base 3 system to encode the data.
Encoding and reading information in DNA has been successful, but there are barriers to it becoming a common storage medium. As with any new technology, price is an obstacle. It costs several thousand dollars to encode a megabyte and a couple hundred dollars to read the information back. However, those in the field are optimistic, expecting the cost to drop significantly within a decade. Another obstacle is the form of storage, as DNA is not random access. To find or obtain a specific bit of information, all of the data has to be read. However, such barriers merely mean that while not yet common, DNA does have applications as a storage medium.
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Current storage mediums either start to degrade or are quickly replaced by newer technology. DNA on its own will react in water, but encased in glass, tests indicate it could hold data without error for thousands to millions of years. DNA will not become obsolete thanks to its durability and importance in biology. A second major positive of DNA is the information density offered by a molecular medium. The scale of molecules and DNA’s ability to twist and fold means that a large amount of information can be stored in almost no space. Goldman, the head of the second experiment, thought the vials containing the synthesized DNA were empty at first. DNA’s qualities make it a bad choice for information that is being used and rewritten constantly, but wonderful for archiving purposes. CERN stores about 90 million gigabytes of information, which, using DNA, would fill a cup. It is currently stored on numerous tape drives, a reliable but old technology.
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