Thursday, March 28th 2019
DNA Successfully Used as Data Storage Medium, 5-byte Message Written, Stored, and Read
DNA, the most prominent genetic material, was successfully used as an end-to-end digital data storage medium. Nature reports that a team of biotechnologists led by Christopher N. Takahashi, Bichlien H. Nguyen, Karin Strauss & Luis Ceze with the University of Washington at Seattle, sponsored by DARPA and Microsoft, have succeeded in encoding and decoding digital information into DNA strands. With it, the team has developed an end-to-end DNA-based data storage device, which consists of an encoder that writes ones and zeroes into DNA sequences that are written into oligonucleotides; a liquid physical storage media in which the DNA is literally stored free from contamination and thermal hazards; and a decoder that consists of a nanopore sequencer.
The researchers have developed a protocol on how to convert 1s and 0s to A-G, C-T base-pairs, including error-correction. A 5-byte message "HELLO" was successfully encoded, stored, and decoded without data loss over a period of 21 hours. DNA-based storage unlocks innumerable possibilities. For starters, in the future, humans will be able to grow storage devices, store foreign information within their genome, and transmit digital information through plasmid agents such as purpose-built viruses. 007 writers must be rubbing their hands.
Source:
Nature
The researchers have developed a protocol on how to convert 1s and 0s to A-G, C-T base-pairs, including error-correction. A 5-byte message "HELLO" was successfully encoded, stored, and decoded without data loss over a period of 21 hours. DNA-based storage unlocks innumerable possibilities. For starters, in the future, humans will be able to grow storage devices, store foreign information within their genome, and transmit digital information through plasmid agents such as purpose-built viruses. 007 writers must be rubbing their hands.
32 Comments on DNA Successfully Used as Data Storage Medium, 5-byte Message Written, Stored, and Read
Now if I could just harness my powers of telepathy...
But why.
The reality is a lot closer than you think. The industry power house. yeast, has been genomically manupulated to a point that it should be considered a new family of organism now comparing to their wild type relatives. Mosanto has been adding DNA barcodes to specific strain of industrial yeast to make sure no commercial DNA sequencing can detect their genetically enhanced yeasts' secret . This of course is a very primitive way. However the implication is already fairly huge.
DNA as data storage is really not for high speed access (for now), more for long term storage. With so many DNA repair machinery in live cells it would be extremely difficult to have data corruption when you consider data storage in geological time scales.
And I also agree, evolution has been the master of programmer all along. As I said a lot of times before and I will continue say it in the future: genomic coding and programming will be huuuuuge in the next 20 years. If you have a kid now better get them started in learning genetic programming early.
Here's another instance even going back to 2012: www.extremetech.com/extreme/134672-harvard-cracks-dna-storage-crams-700-terabytes-of-data-into-a-single-gram
So cyberpunk, much awesome, very cool. Wow
memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bio-neural_gel_pack
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
Jesus warned us that this will be one of the signs before His return; all things are drawing to a close.
seriously a media that dislikes UV Rays and heat/cold isn't a good option i say
While this is a scary advancement, it's also very fascinating.