Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Scientists have found a way to store data in DNA, a feat which could preserve mankind’s history and greatest accomplishments for millennia.
Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) recently announced their success at storing data by encoding it to DNA, according to www.technewsworld.com. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule encoding the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and many viruses.
The scientists have stored some Shakespearean sonnets and part of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
However, the team at the EBI isn’t the first to try this new approach to data storage. Last year, a Harvard University team stored around 700 terabytes of digital data in a single gram of DNA.
This method for archiving data could make it possible to store 100 million hours of high-definition video in ‘about a cup of DNA’, according to the scientists. One gram of DNA could hold as much as information as more than a million CDs.
Unlike existing methods of data storage, all of which have relatively limited life spans, DNA has proven it can stand the test of time.
Although DNA can be destroyed, it is still more durable than paper or tape and it can’t easily be damaged by electromagnetic fields.
“We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information, because we can extract it from wooly mammoth bones, which date back tens of thousands of years and make sense of it,” said Nick Goldman of EBI. “It’s also incredibly small, dense, and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy.”
This new method of data archiving may also have other advantages over current methods of storage.
Although tape is the cheapest storage medium, it’s performance is lacking, explained Fang Zhang, storage analyst at IHS iSuppli. Analysing data using tape would take much longer, compared to SSD and HDD. Depending on how frequently it is used, tape could wear out.
“This is incredibly durable tagging for living things, tagging that could transcend generations,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. “The most obvious use would be to record right into genetically created plants and animals to preserve rights and prevent illegal cloning/copies.”
