The use of DNA as a storage medium for the general public is no longer science fiction, but a future that is fast approaching. Researchers have developed a prototype 100 times faster than currently available technologies, capable of writing 20 gigabytes in a day.
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[EN VIDÉO] 3 unusual ways to store digital data To store files, music, or videos, most of us use a DVD or hard drive. But researchers have developed sometimes surprising alternative methods.
The amount of information produced daily by humanity is increasing exponentially. How to store so much data? THE’DNA offers a particularly interesting solution, with a information density and an duration unmatched life. A team of researchers from Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has just taken a new step in this area.
The use of DNA as storage medium poses a problem because of the speedwriting. Current technologies have managed to write a maximum of 200 megabytes, an operation that took a whole day. The new chip developed by GTRI measures approximately 2.5 centimeters. The prototype integrates multiple microwells, with a depth of around one hundred nanometers , to write several strands DNA in parallel. Once fully functional, the chip could be 100 times faster than other technologies.
A storage medium that could last for millennia
The data is encoded in the nitrogenous bases(A, C, G and T), but writing and reading results in up to 10% errors. To compensate, they also created a codec capable of identifying and correcting these errors in collaboration with the University of Washington.
This technology would not replace our hard drives in the near future, but rather serve as an archival medium. Currently, this operation is always carried out on magnetic tape, an old technology whose supports must be changed every ten years. At a sufficiently low temperature, DNA can be stored for millennia, thus providing a very long-term storage solution.
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