The capacity of our digital storage devices has skyrocket in late years . But there ’s one depot medium that still kvetch the crap out of our state - of - the - nontextual matter satisfying DoS , and world did n’t excogitate it . It ’s called DNA .
A team of scientist is trying to figure out whether the threefold - spiral speck that encode every plant , brute and microbe on planet Earth can be used to uphold our data for thousands of long time . At the 250th meeting of the American Chemical Society today , ETH Zurich ’s Robert Grass is presenting a trial impression - of - concept demonstration of the technology . His research team has managed to encode DNA with 83 kilobytes of text from the Swiss Federal Charter from 1291 and the Method of Archimedes from the tenth century .
“ A little after the discovery of the two-fold genus Helix computer architecture of DNA , people figured out that the taunt language of nature is very similar to the binary language we practice in computers , ” Grass said in astatement .
On punishing drive , we use zeros and one to play data . desoxyribonucleic acid , meanwhile , practice four chemical substance base ( A , T , C and G ) , strung together like rung on a sugar - phosphate ravel . It ’s got four letters alternatively of two numbers racket , but both systems can salt away endlessly complex substitution of selective information .
Except that DNA , Grass argues , is much , much better . Today , a difficult drive the size of a pocket-sized book might back up roughly five tebibyte of data , and that drive ’s part might last about 50 years . Meanwhile , a microscopic droplet of desoxyribonucleic acid can hold the complete “ instruction book ” — billions upon billions of letters — for thousands of organisms . In theory , Grass enunciate , a fraction of an oz. of DNA could salt away more than 300,000 terabytes of information . Even near , from archeologic and paleontological studies , we roll in the hay that DNA can last for 100 to one thousand of class .
All your seraphic , sweet-flavored data in a droplet
icy DNA locked inside cellphone might last a few millennia , but Grass take care no ground we ca n’t do comfortably . That ’s why his squad is now packing DNA into tiny , warmth - tolerant silicon oxide sphere . After baking some of these sphere at 160ºF for a week — the equivalent of keeping them at 50 degrees for 2,000 years — the DNA in spite of appearance was still error free . Kept in cold storage , one of these capsule might end up lasting tens of thousands , perhaps even trillion of years .
That sound middling promising , but the experimental technology still face some braggy hurdles . For one , DNA - establish archive are n’t yet searchable , which mystify a rather major job in terms of usability . Imagine what a incubus it ’d be to convalesce a lost file cabinet on a backup drive if you had to strain through every single text file yourself . Then there ’s the presently - staggering price tag end : Grass reckons that encode and storing a few megabytes of data today would be thousand of dollars .
But scientist are hopeful these obstruction can be overcome . Grass ’ squad is already working on methods for label specific moment of DNA , the first step toward creating a searchable archive . And as the methods are refined and automated , the cost of genetic computer memory could dribble well .
What sorts of data point might we want to store on DNA ? Grass imagines it could assist us track and keep up our ever - evolving troves of online information — for instance , change in Wikipedia pages over time . Or the integrality of humanity ’s online Starcraft experience , or every installment of Doctor Who plus outtake , until the end of time . perhaps even the IRS could finally digitize its record — hey , one can woolgather .
My idea , however , immediately jumped to the biologic reposition electric potential . Imagine if you could not only backpack your genome into a capsule , but adhere your entire biography mighty aboard . In the futurity , humans might be able to clone your fleshy ego back into universe and reconstruct your memories . Creepy or astonishing ? You decide .
[ American Chemical Society ]
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