DNA hard drive: 1 grams can save 700TB data

With the development of bio-computer technology, more and more new types of storage media are coming into our sight. In 2007, Japanese scientists successfully used bacterial DNA to store data for millennia; we've also introduced crabs to computers and the use of bacteria to make hard drives, the idea of which is quite sci-fi. Recently, biological engineers and geneticists at the Harvard Institute of Harvard's Wyss Cato have successfully developed a new technology that can store about 700TB of data into 1 grams of DNA before using dnahttp://www.aliyun.com /zixun/aggregation/17326.html "> Storage data Capacity record increased 1000 times times.

The team led by George Chezzi (George Church) and Serillam Kusuri (Sriram Kosuri) used our DNA as a digital hard disk, synthesizing a DNA chain that could store 96 of bits of data, specifically for adenine, guanine, Cytosine and thymus were given binary values (Thymosin and guanine = 1, adenine and cytosine =0), then the gene sequence was synthesized by microfluidic chip, which matched the position of the sequence with the related data set. When you need to read the data, you simply revert the gene sequence to binary. To facilitate the reading of the data, the researchers also added 19-bit address blocks to the head of each DNA fragment to record its location in the original file.

It is not the first attempt to use DNA as a storage medium, and scientists have long coveted it. DNA as a storage medium has three advantages:

Thanks to the development of microfluidic technology, synthesizing and arranging DNA has become a simple and convenient work. Prior to this, the Human Genome Project (Human Genome Project) took years to study a human DNA group containing 3 billion pairs of bases. Now, with the help of microfluidic chips, the work can be done in just a few hours.

Imagine that 1 grams of DNA does not reach a drop of dew on the fingertips, but can store 700TB of data, equivalent to 14,000 50GB of Blu-ray discs, or 233 3TB hard drives (about 151 kilograms heavy). In the trial, Chezzi and Kusuri copied 70 billion copies of Chezzi's new book stored in DNA, up to 44PB of data.

There have also been a number of scientists studying DNA storage trying to write data in the genomes of living cells. But cells not only die, but they also divide and replicate, which is a fatal blow to the data stored in them. The Chezzi and Kusuri did not use cells at all, and they used synthetic DNA to circumvent previous problems. Although the use of living cell DNA storage data can not escape the problem of cell death and cell division, but after all, in a short period of time to ensure the security of data, in a particular situation (such as the 007 series of movies) completely can be used. Of course, Chezzi and Kusuri's scientific research is more in line with the needs of real society.

At present, the data backup of the website is usually kept for months or even weeks because of the shortage of storage space. By the time the DNA storage technology matures, we'll be able to store the information of all mankind. Humans can install cameras on every inch of the land and record everything that happens every minute. Human beings can also store all the books, materials, video information, hundreds of kilograms of DNA can be qualified for this "human" work.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)