A small cup of DNA can store 100 million hours of HD video!


There are many forms of information storages. Unlike them DNA is terrifically long-lasting and does not require constant electrical power, it is tiny and a small cup of DNA can store one hundred million hours of HD video. What else do you need?

We ordinary people do not use DNA storage. Because DNA synthesis is very expensive and only works for short strings. But scientists have used synthetic DNA to store digital files.

Now the good news is:

British researchers broke a long string of information into many overlapping short sequences, each tagged with its position in the overall sequence. American collaborators then synthesized short pieces of DNA to match the strings, and shipped the material overseas. Finally, researchers reconstructed the digital files with complete accuracy.

From what I understand is, it will take a decade to make DNA storage cost-effective. I really hope it happens in my lifetime. I just can’t wait to use it.

Comments

  1. F [nucular nyandrothol] says

    Huh, nothing about the read speeds involved in this experiment (at least not visible this side of a pay wall), but they say it scales better than previous work.

    Of course, data storage, like so many other groups of technologies, is unpredictable, and there may be a different method that makes it to a usable or marketable state first.

  2. says

    Of course, the movie industry will never allow it. Imagine movies stored in DNA: they’ll be self replicating! That’s even worse than illegal copying students or Chinese…

  3. says

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