We live in an era where any amount of data storage can fall short. The amount of new digital data that grows every day is around 22.5 million gigabytes, according to MIT. This adds up to the already existing 10 trillion gigabytes of digital data.
This digital data includes movies, music, and other multimedia files. It is stored in huge data centers that are both costly and take up a lot of space due to its massive size. This raises a lot of concerns as the world is becoming more digitized by the day and archival demands continue to grow at an alarming pace.
Cost-effective data solution
Previous research has shown DNA as a potential way to store large amounts of data without spending huge sums and allotting large areas for data centers. MIT has built upon that idea in its recent study, with researchers suggesting that all of the world’s digital data can possibly be stored in a single mug full of DNA.
This is possible because DNA has a high density, allowing it to hold huge amounts of data relative to its size. There have been instances of storing digital data such as text or photos as DNA, but this new study focuses on another important aspect of the growing technology – retrieving the required information from multiple pieces of DNA storing several files.
Stored data will be extremely stable
Through the latest study, MIT researchers have shown this technique using a 6-micrometer silica particle storing 20 images. Short DNA sequences were labeled with the content of the file, allowing them to easily pullout individual images they wanted from the DNA-stored album.
It might sound out of the ordinary, but DNA has many benefits when talking about mass data storage and not only about its high density. The researchers have also assured that the stored data will be ‘extremely stable.’
“We need new solutions for storing these massive amounts of data that the world is accumulating, especially the archival data. DNA is a thousandfold denser than even flash memory, and another property that’s interesting is that once you make the DNA polymer, it doesn’t consume any energy. You can write the DNA and then store it forever,” said Mark Bathe, MIT biological engineering professor.
