A new breakthrough in DNA technology could revolutionize data storage and computation. Scientists have developed a system that can store petabytes of data in DNA for thousands to even millions of years, and astonishingly, it can also solve complex puzzles like Sudoku.
Your little finger has more storage capacity than the best hard drives—quite literally. Every cell in your body can hold about 800 MB of data, and with trillions of cells, we each are walking data centers. Scientists have long sought to leverage this extraordinary natural storage system.
However, working with DNA is challenging due to its fragility and difficulties in writing, reading, and processing data. A recent study offers a solution with a soft polymer material that serves as a scaffold for DNA. This polymer, called dendricolloid, allows DNA to be dehydrated for long-term storage and rehydrated for data retrieval. These nanoscale fibers provide a high surface area for storing data, offering an unprecedented density of 10 petabytes (10 million GB) per cubic centimeter—equivalent to a sugar cube-sized storage unit.
This new method enhances DNA’s durability, enduring more than 170 dehydration/rehydration cycles, as opposed to the 60 cycles possible with bare DNA. The technique also makes DNA suitable for long-term archival storage, with an estimated half-life of 6,000 years at fridge temperature and up to 2 million years when frozen.
Data is written by converting information into DNA sequences and retrieved using RNA molecules, avoiding damage to the DNA. Enzymes allow direct computations, like solving 3 x 3 Sudoku puzzles, within the DNA itself.
This advancement brings DNA computers a step closer to reality, paving the way for both ultra-dense data storage and computation directly within DNA—a significant leap toward the future of computing.
