A New Way of Storing Digital Data?

When you think of storing you data what do you think off? Paper and pen, sure. Spinning hard drive, off course. Flash memory, getting a little more technical but sure why not. DNA, wait what? Yes, DNA could be a new way of storing DNA. Not now, but in the foreseeable future why not.

When you think about it, it actually makes sense that DNA can be used ti store digital data. After all, we already us it to store our genetic data. Everything we are is stored in our DNA which is made up of 4 DNA bases, adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).

The 4 DNA Bases. Source

This is actually very similar to how digital data is stored. Just like our entire being is stored in 4 little molecules, all digital information is essentially 0s and 1s. So scientists from Microsoft and the University of Washington are working together to store data as DNA by converting these 0s and 1s into a theoretical strand of DNA using these four bases using a special algorithm. Notice they the DNA is still digital, as in its store on a computer somewhere and is just a long chain of A, C,G, and Ts. From there they send it to a company called Twist Bioscience, who takes this blueprint and actually makes the DNA into a physical thing.

Now you might be wondering if all this is worth it. Well, the Microsoft and Washington University team recently made a 200 megabyte strand of DNA and it was small than the tip of a pencil. According to one scientist, the accessible internet is about 700 Exabyte (a very big number) and that would fit into the size of a shoe box if it was made into DNA. Just image, the whole internet would fit into a space of about the size of 3 or 4 hard drives.

Ok, so we have all this data in the form of DNA, but how do we read it? Well, it would be read the same way any DNA is read, via PCR and sequencing. PCR (or polymerase chain reaction) is the process of amplifying DNA. DNA is interesting that the 4 bases will only pair with their counterpart. A will only bond with T and C will only bond with G. Therefore, if you were to accidentally lose half of the DNA you would still be able to rebuild that strand. PCR takes advantage of that. You have one double stranded of DNA. You heat it and the AT and GC bonds break so that you now have two free floating strands, this is also called denaturing. Next, in a process called annealing a starter chunk of DNA binds to the free floating strands. Finally, in a process called elongation, a protein called DNA polymerase uses free floating A, C, G, and Ts in order to rebuild both strands off the starting fragment. So what was one strand of DNA is now two perfect copies. Imagine this process repeated many many times and eventually you have thousands of exact copies of the strand you started with. 

A picture representation of the PCR. Source

After they have produced multiple copies of DNA they will sequence it. Sequencing is a rather complicated process, and there are many different ways to sequence DNA. If you want more information go here. Just know, that in order to sequence DNA many methods require a relatively high concentration of identical DNA to work, which is why the PCR process is necessary. The sequencing will spit out a long chain of A, C, G, and Ts on a computer screen and this can be converted to binary and then converted into usable digital data.

Reading is seems like more trouble than its worth doesn't it? But there are actually a lot of advantages to DNA compared to other mediums. The first we touched on earlier in that it is much more compact and data dense. The second is that, under good conditions, DNA is very stable and can be stored for a very long time. The third, and probably best reason, is that DNA will never be an outdated platform. Imagine a thousand years from now. You find an old hard drive or VHS tape. They might be in pristine condition, but good luck finding a way to actually read them. But DNA, will still be perfectly understandable. DNA has been around for a very very long time and has remained virtually unchanged. So, as long as there are beings that still us DNA they will have methods to read it.

Here a video from Microsoft that give some more information about the topic.