New Delhi: Science has gone further to improve the procedure for storing data by using the technique of moving type at the molecular level, and this has helped to improve the rate at which information can be keyed into the DNA.This was elaborated in a recent article in Nature that revolutionise the DNA data storage field and will make it possible to store valuable information for long periods at lower costs.
Trillions of bits of information can be stored in a single gram of DNA, about as much information as 10 million hours of high-definition video. Contained in an amazing amount of genetic material that can be stored in just a few pickup trucks, it is at least an order of magnitude greater than traditional electronic hard drives that degrade within years. Further, it is found that DNA molecules are robust and can persist into thousands of years if protected correctly.
However, writing data in DNA has emerged with challenges; these include: the prior techniques of synthesising DNA strands involve forming them letter by letter; the modern techniques allow only 320 million bytes of DNA per day. Even at this rate, writing a gram of DNA would require nearly 2 million years and is therefore more costly than conventional hard discs.
Techniques Derived from History
The research team of Long Qian of Peking University borrowed from the movable type printing press, an invention that broke the information barrier in the Renaissance period. In this way, they built from enzymes long, standardised templates of single-stranded DNAs as a base and hundreds of short single-stranded DNA “bricks.” Every one of them was intended to adhere to specific areas of the template as a typesetter would choose letters from type cases.
The researchers used methylation, a naturally occurring process, to add methyl groups to the DNA bricks to write binary code. It helps to catalyse these methyl groups to go on the DNA template for effective writing, followed by effective reading of the encoded information.
Future Developments
The first proof-attempt demonstrated writing and reading of files and from drives using nearly 270000 bits to store, which are sufficient to store high-resolution images. At the present time, it costs roughly $0.003 to write a bit using this technique. But Qian expects that commercial uses could bring the costs down significantly and increase writing speeds to as much as 2 terabytes a day—iit would be 6,000 times faster than existing synthesisers.
In the future, the research team plans to refine this method, advancing from this general one, by identifying more chemical markers that can expand data encoding potential and improve speed of writing. This relatively new approach, if successful, may form a new revolution in the history of data storage technology like the revolution of movable type.
