A pair of researchers at Columbia
University and the New York Genome Center recently wrote a full computer
operating system, an 1895 French film, an Amazon gift card and other files into
DNA strands and retrieved them without errors, according to a study published
in the latest edition of Science.
There are several advantages to
using DNA. It’s a lot smaller than traditional media; a single gram can fit
215,000 times more data than a one terabyte hard drive, The Atlantic notes.
It’s also incredibly durable. Scientists are using DNA thousands of years old
to de-extinct wooly mammoths, for example. But, until now, they’ve only
unlocked a fraction of its storage capacity. Study coauthors Yaniv Erlich and
Dina Zielinski were able to fit the theoretical maximum amount of information
per nucleotide using a new method inspired by how movies stream across the
internet.
“We mapped the bits of the files
to DNA nucleotides. Then, we synthesized these nucleotides and stored the
molecules in a test-tube,” Erlich explained in an interview with ResearchGate.
“To retrieve the information, we sequenced the molecules. This is the basic
process. To pack the information, we devised a strategy—called DNA
Fountain—that uses mathematical concepts from coding theory. It was this
strategy that allowed us to achieve optimal packing, which was the most
challenging aspect of the study.”
When an online streaming service
like Netflix sends information, it uses fountain codes, which partition data
into small packets. Even if a few packets are lost, Netflix can reconstruct the
entire stream. DNA has a similar problem; scientists can only create and
sequence it in small batches. This means that large amounts of data need to be
broken down, and bits of them can be lost. Another downside to DNA? It breaks
down after sequencing, which means the information is lost the more it’s read.
Luckily, DNA is easy to replicate.
Post a Comment