Sunday, November 24, 2024
8.3 C
New York

A Hard Drive Made From DNA – Is That Even Possible?

Sure, why not?  There are many reasons why DNA is probably the beat candidate for the job.  For one, it’s much smaller that anything that’s traditionally used and just one tiny little gram can fit more than 200,000 times the data that one terabyte hard drive can hold.  But, it’s still very early days in working with DNA hard drives and so far scientists have only uncovered a portion of its storage capacity.


This new method used by coauthors Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski was inspired by the way in which movies are streamed across the internet. “We mapped the bits of files to DNA nucleotides. Then, we synthesized these nucleotides and stored the molecules in a test-tube. 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 the optimal packing, which was the most challenging aspect of the study,” explained Erlich.

File streaming services like Netflix use fountain codes to send information via small sections called packets. If just a few of these packets get lost in transmission, then Netflix can easily reconstruct the whole thing. Using this same concept the team discovered DNA was much the same and could only be created and sequenced in small batches. Bearing that in mind, sometimes when breaking down large parts of information, data can become lost. The other not so great thing about using DNA for storage is that it breaks down after sequencing so the more that’s read, the more that’s lost. So although DNA will become a viable option for data storage in the future, I don’t think it’s ready quite yet.


Related Links;


More News To Read

Hot this week

Brooklyn Defendants Charged in Rideshare Hacking Scheme: Jailbroken Phones Used to Exploit Uber

Brooklyn federal court has charged two defendants, Eliahou Paldiel...

Detecting Defects in Next-Generation Computer Chips: The Future of TMD-Based Semiconductors

As technology advances, the demand for smaller, more powerful...

Merging Galaxies in the Early Universe: The Birth of a Monster Galaxy

Astronomers have recently observed a fascinating event in the...

Topics

Brooklyn Defendants Charged in Rideshare Hacking Scheme: Jailbroken Phones Used to Exploit Uber

Brooklyn federal court has charged two defendants, Eliahou Paldiel...

Detecting Defects in Next-Generation Computer Chips: The Future of TMD-Based Semiconductors

As technology advances, the demand for smaller, more powerful...

Merging Galaxies in the Early Universe: The Birth of a Monster Galaxy

Astronomers have recently observed a fascinating event in the...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to Uncover Galactic Fossils and Dark Matter Mysteries

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is set to transform our...

Black Myth: Wukong – A Game that Gamers Love Despite Media Backlash

In a gaming industry increasingly influenced by social agendas,...

Gravitational Waves Reveal a ‘Supercool’ Secret About the Big Bang

In 2023, physicists made a groundbreaking discovery that could...

Related Articles

Popular Categories

Send this to a friend