Reliable information storage in DNA (2.2 petabyte per gram)

On Habré , experimental technologies of recording / reading information in DNA have been repeatedly mentioned . The DNA molecule stores information in the quadruple number system, according to the number of nucleotides (0 = A, 1 = T, 2 = C, 3 = G). It is a compact container with a recording density thousands of times greater than that of existing media. However, for technology to move from scientific testing to commercial use, a number of problems need to be addressed. One of them is the specificity of digital information in which the same bits can be repeated many times (CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC). If you repeatedly repeat the same nucleotide in the DNA molecule, this negatively affects the stability of the cluster and information may be lost, even when using redundant duplication and error correction.

Researchers from the European Institute of Bioinformatics published a paper describing how to significantly improve the stability of DNA. Simply, they propose to abandon the quadruple system (Base-4) in favor of the ternary (Base-3), and use the fourth nucleotide for business purposes for splitting long chains (CCCACCCACCCACCCCCACCC).


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During the experiment, researchers recorded almost megabytes of information in DNA, including all 154 Shakespeare's sonnets in .txt format, a video recording of Martin Luther King’s speech for 26 seconds, the Bioinformatics Institute magazine cover in .jpeg format, a scientific work describing the DNA structure in pdf format, as well as another file describing the encoding process. In total, everything fit in 739 kilobytes.

When switching from Base-4 to Base-3, we lose 25% of the information capacity, but even in this version, scientists report an information recording density of 2.2 petabytes per 1 gram of biological material. The experiment showed the reliability of reading information 100%. Theoretically, this scheme is able to scale up to the limits exceeding the volumes of all existing digital information, the authors of the study write.

Based on the current technological progress in the field of synthesis and sequencing, DNA carriers for recording information should appear on the open market within ten years. Although DNA allows you to store information for thousands of years, the first commercial media will be sold with a guarantee of up to 50 years, the researchers said.

Today, the cost of encoding information in DNA is estimated at about $ 12,400 per megabyte , the cost of reading is $ 220 per 1 MB. Within a decade, prices should fall by several orders of magnitude.