DNA Could Power the Hard Drives of the Future – Geek

So we all know DNA stores the code that makes us well possible, right? Those Gs, Ts, Cs and As might not seem like much, but theyre effectively the same as computer code. Plus, unlike computers, DNA works at the molecular scale meaning that you can pack a metric crapload of information into a really, really tiny space. With the rise of HD, constant streaming, and mega media consumption, storing staggering amounts of data in molecular form might just be a necessity.

Scientists have already been working on DNA-based computer storage for a few years now. Harvard geneticist George Church has been the technologys standard bearer since 2011, and its already made some big leaps. So far weve managed to translate hundreds of megabytes holding everything from a computer virus to an Amazon Gift Card into DNA. But thats small-time. In the next few years, Microsoft believes it can bring a DNA-based storage solution online in a commercial data center by 2020.

Thats a little ambitious, but its not without reason. On top of being tiny, DNA is easy for us to read and as long as life is around, well probably keep some technology that can read and interpret DNA on hand. Plus, while the molecule isnt super stable in the long-term (anything past 10,000 years gets rough really quick, unlike some other media which can last for up to a few million years), you can use the same enzymes that we need to reproduce and make literally millions of copies in a few hours. Sure, each will have some mistakes in the code, but with error correction and other techniques, you could have an easily reproducible archive that would be almost impossible to destroy conventionally.

Thats amazing for everyone from researchers and archivists to universities. Plus, these sorts of applications all but eliminate DNAs biggest problem when it comes to storing data its not easily searchable. Once the enzymes get going, you can do a lot quickly, but if were storing massive amounts of data in these strands, finding specific bits of code might be tough. When used as archival solution, however, theres little concern.

The next big hurdle will be sequencing. Reading the DNA is expensive even today and still costs well into the hundreds. For most applications, thats far too much for daily use. Still, Microsoft clearly thinks the idea is worth the investment. Itll be cool to see how this pans out. Maybe, one day, well all have personal archives with all the data weve ever used or needed, carried around on a small disk inside which sits self-replicating DNA. Maybe thats really what the Matrix is not some dumbass battery, but using humans as computer data dumping sacs. Itd make a helluva lot more sense, at least.

In all seriousness, the amount of data our society is producing has increased and is continuing to increase exponentially. We wont have long at all before this becomes a critical problem, and DNA is one very convenient, albeit slow and expensive, solution.

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DNA Could Power the Hard Drives of the Future - Geek