The process resulted to custom DNA strings encoded with the files, which will likely be stored for thousands of years given the fact that DNA does not degrade.
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The idea was to look into the idea of using DNA molecules as a way to store massive amounts of data. For all that we have been blaming our genes for, there is little that we understand about them but scientific research over the past decade is now allowing us to unlock the mystery of DNA to the point that we may be able to recreate DNA with all its properties in the coming decades. Once developed fully, this storage technology could offer many benefits. The data storage in DNA is a record to date. In time, scientists think that DNA-based storage will make financial sense, but this is not in the foreseeable future. Knowing IoT and Big Data are on the way, having a long-lasting and reliable data storage solution is essential. In order to read the data, the information is extracted with the help of the polymerase chain reaction technique. The archived materials include Project Guttenberg’s top 100 public domain books and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“We wanted to store something creative and in a modern format”, Professor Ceze said.
“Interestingly, DNA already has a digital “flavor, ‘ as it has four bases and molecules that ‘stick” to each other in a very programmable way”, says Ceze.
Feature image: DNA in test tube. “Once they’ve sharply increased the concentration of the desired snippets, they take a sample, sequence or decode the DNA and then run error correction computations”.
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“A significant fraction of this data is in archival form; for example, Facebook recently built an entire data center dedicated to 1 exabyte of cold storage”, the scientists stated in their research paper. Last, but not least, Microsoft bundled an HD music video of OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass into a DNA strand. Unlike every current type of storage media, DNA data storage doesn’t have any meaningful shelf life, as estimates say that data stored via this method could remain readable for up to 10,000 years. In 1999, DNA-based storage involved encoding and recovering just a 23-character message. Strauss emphasizes that DNA storage will first come handy in areas where large archives are common, such as servers holding medical data or numerous video files. After getting sent to Seattle, researchers rehydrated the molecules and caused selected strands to replicate themselves. Reading the data uses a biotech tweak to random access memory (RAM), another concept borrowed from computer science. While people have been working on DNA coding for long and they have been able to create artificial DNA, what has eluded them is the science behind regenerative capacity of DNA. It is durable, compact and last for long if stored well.
