A Blog by Jonathan Low

 

Dec 11, 2019

Will Artificial DNA Be the Future Of Digital Storage?

It may be the most logical and cost effective solution. JL

Robert Hotz reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The quest to harness DNA code, which nature evolved to store biological information, has become a fast-moving research field that combines molecular biology and nanotechnology, as consumers and scientists seek ways to handle tsunamis of data. All the information to create a human being can be coded in 3 billion base pairs of four nucleotides that fit inside a single cell. Scientists can encode information using those four letters, much as digital data are currently translated into ones and zeros. “All of the technologies we use to build computers today are reaching their limit. It is unavoidable to go to the molecular code. There is nowhere else to go.”
The future of digital memory may be inside a small plastic bunny that contains 3-D printing instructions for replicating itself stored in artificial DNA, said scientists Monday, who announced a method for mixing genetically encoded data into common manufacturing materials.
The scientists sealed the DNA data inside thousands of microscopic glass beads that protected the information as the plastic for the toy was heated and processed. By sequencing a snippet of the toy’s DNA-infused plastic, they could extract the instructions and make flawless copies of the figure, they said. They reported the experiment in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
While cumbersome compared with conventional computer hard drives or tapes, the new DNA data-storage technique one day could be used to store digital information in items molded into virtually any shape, the scientists said. It could, for example, be used to make devices that contain their own blueprints or to embed electronic health records in medical implants and prescription drugs, they said.“We wanted to show that you can use this technology to hide information in common objects,” said computational genomics researcher Yaniv Erlich, a co-author of the study who is chief science officer at a consumer genetics genealogy company called MyHeritage. The company wasn’t involved in the project.
The quest to harness DNA code, which nature evolved over billions of years to store and duplicate biological information, has become a fast-moving research field that combines molecular biology and nanotechnology, as consumers, engineers and scientists seek ways to handle tsunamis of data.
In 2016, humans collectively generated 16.1 trillion gigabytes of digital information. A single gigabyte can store about 4,400 books. The International Data Corp. estimates that by 2025 the world will generate about 160 zettabytes of data—more digital bytes of information than stars in the observable universe.
“All of the technologies we use to build computers today are reaching their limit,” said computer scientist Luis Ceze at the University of Washington in Seattle, who is developing techniques to synthesize and read digital data stored in DNA. He wasn’t involved in the project. “It is unavoidable to go to the molecular code. There is nowhere else to go.”
As a form of data storage, DNA is in a class by itself. All the information to create a human being, for instance, can be coded in 3 billion base pairs of just four chemical nucleotides—adenine (A) paired with thymine (T), or guanine (G) paired with cytosine (C)—that fit neatly inside a single cell. Under the proper conditions, it can last for thousands of years. Scientists can encode information using those four letters, much as digital data are currently translated into the binary language of ones and zeros.
To showcase DNA’s robust energy-efficient data-handling capacities, research groups have used the biochemical language of life to encode everything from Shakespeare’s sonnets to rock music videos. Last June, a Boston-based DNA computing company called Catalog stored all the text of Wikipedia, totaling about 16 gigabytes of conventional computer memory, into strands of synthetic DNA.
As a practical matter, though, DNA data memory is expensive, costing about $2,000 or so per megabyte. In its natural purified state, it is a temperature-sensitive sticky liquid that doesn’t mix well with many other materials, several experts said.
The research team led by nanoparticles scientist Robert Grass at ETH Zurich in Switzerland devised a way to encase coded DNA molecules in extremely small silica glass spheres. Each bead typically contains several thousand strands of DNA-encoded data, they said. The DNA beads mix well with common plastics including polyester, polyurethane, epoxy and silicone.
To demonstrate its versatility, the scientists encoded a short video into DNA and embedded it in the plexiglass of one lens in a pair of prescription eyeglasses. The DNA microbeads are virtually undetectable and don’t alter the corrective optical properties of the lens, they said.You can take a piece of my ear, my heart or a drop of blood and extract my entire DNA code,” said Dr. Grass, who was the senior author of the study. “With this, you can do the same thing in a  product.”

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