The storage of information is always a challenge to the computer engineers. Ever increasing data is expected to reach 170 zetta bytes till 2025. The solutiion lies in DNA, which is incredibly dense. The whole genome of an organism fits into a cell that is invisible to the naked eye. That's why computer scientist are turning to microbiology to design the next best way to store ever increasing collection of digital data.
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| Comparison. (Source: Nature.com) |
The point of using synthetic DNA as a sort of double-helix hard drive is simple--you can store astounding amount of data in the tiniest amount of space, and it will be stable forever. Scientist says a single gram of DNA could hold 4.5 billion gigabytes of data and remain stable for millenium. DNA storage could form highest-density large-scale data storage scheme ever invented.
Advantages:
DNA has advantages that other storage media do not. It takes up less space. It is durable, as long as it is kept cold, dry, and dark -- DNA from mammoths that died thousands of years ago can still be extracted and sequenced. And it has a 3.7-billion-year track record. Floppy disks, VHS, zip disks, laser disks, cassette tapes...every media format eventually becomes obsolete But DNA will never become obsolete.
Obstacles:
The use of DNA in data storage is still in its early stages...and...the immediate use of the DNA data storage is for archiving. However, it's still quite expensive to archive...data on DNA. In fact, synthesizing the DNA costs $7,000 alone, while reading it costs $2,000.
