We Could Be Storing Data IN Our DNA by 2020!
Imagine you could carry specific data everywhere - it would always be with you, it would be within you!
What sounds very much like a science fiction movie plot is actually real life:
Microsoft has announced that they are working on a technology to store data in your DNA.
Their goal is to have a storage system based on DNA working inside a data center until the end of this decade.
The aim is to have a “proto-commercial system in three years storing some amount of data on DNA in one of our data centers, for at least a boutique application" said Doug Carmean at Microsoft research.
After the proto-commercial in 3 years, a fully operational model should be completed within about 10 years from now - at least that's the goal.
Why would you want to save data from photos, videos or documents in the same molecules that our very core, our DNA is made of? Isn't that a bit crazy?!
The reason is that shrinking the size of computer memory has come close to its limit, but DNA could store very large amounts of data much more easily.
DNA can hold 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (which is a quintillion) bytes of information in one cubic millimeter.
Imagine this: if every movie ever made would be formatted in DNA, the storage volume needed would be smaller than a sugar cube!
“DNA is the densest known storage medium in the universe, just based on the laws of physics. That is the reason why people are looking into this. And the problem we are solving is the exponential growth of stored information.”-Zhirnov, chief scientist of the Semiconductor Research Corporation
It has been done before - but only on a small scale.
In July 2016, Microsoft successfully 200 MB of megabytes in a DNA strand - including a music video.
The work was conducted by Karin Strauss of Microsoft Research and Luis Ceze from the University of Washington laboratory of computers.
How does it work?
This is the simplified explanation of the process:
First, the data needs to be converted from zeroes and ones to the molecules that DNA is made of - these are called ATCG molecules.
Then, the sequences are synthesized into actual DNA, and pooled with the other sequences that have been created.
To be able to access the files later, a "polymerase chain reaction" is being used to select the specific sequences you need.
Then, those sequences are being read, and the ATCG molecules are reverted into data.
Challenges
Challenge #1: Cost
The biggest challenge for this technology is that it's very expensive.
Specifically, the first step is the most expensive: actually converting the data into DNA (into ATCG molecules).
This is simply because the chemical process is very complex and costly.
For Microsoft's successful test run last year, they used 13,448,372 unique pieces of DNA. According to experts, buying this amount of DNA material on the open market would cost around $800,000.
Microsoft have already stated that the cost would have to fall by a factor of 10,000 to make it widely adoptable.
This might seem unlikely, but Microsoft also said that they believe this could happen in the future due to technological advancements.
“The main issue with DNA storage is the cost. So the main question is whether Microsoft solved this problem. (...) I did not see any progress towards this goal, but maybe they have something in their pipeline.”-Yaniv Erlich, Professor at Columbia University
Challenge #2: Speed
Another problem would be the speed with which the whole process is executed.
To be efficient and cost-effective, the whole process would ideally have to be automated.
The experiment in summer 2016 took several weeks to perform, so it's estimated that the transaction speed was only about 400 bytes per second - which is painfully slow.
Microsoft's goal would be to increase this speed to 100 megabytes per second.
So in conclusion, Microsoft is working on a first prototype model to be finished in 3 years, and a fully operational model to be finished in 10 years. But the obstacles that need to be overcome are still quite challenging, and a lot of technological advancements would have to be made to reach those goals.
What's your opinion about storing Data inside our DNA - amazing or creepy?
Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
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Simply amazing where we are now compared to ten years ago.
Enjoyed the article, awesome work.
Definitely. If you would have told somebody in the year 2000 that we would soon be able to store videos in our DNA, he would think you're insane.
Hmm.. I could see a few implementations of this. One that comes to mind could be storing your will in your DNA.
Just think- Assassin's Creed could easily be reality for our descendants. People start encoding their lives into their DNA. Then anyone born could at any time feed their DNA into one of those DNA scanners, probably just a dongle connected to a USB port, and see their ancestor's lives as they experienced it.
"Oh look, that's the time grandpa Jeff crashed his 2097 Corvette Stingray into that tree" or "there's the time my great great great uncle banged that cheerleader he always talked about"
You're right, that would be an ideal use for it!
Or imagine storing very sensible documents in your DNA - it would be more secure than any safe in the world.
NEW WORLD ORDER - Bill vaccine Gates
We already have data stored in our DNA. DNA not only stores our genetic history, it also contains ancestral memories. As I documented as part of the non fictional part of a fiction book "The Lost Truth":
Of course the DNA already stores incredible amounts of information about us, our history and our memories. Thanks for sharing that video!
What microsoft is trying to do here is storing digital information like documents, pictures or videos in our DNA.
Yeah as I covered in my book that has already been done. They turned a photo of a Da Vinci painting into binary, then they turned that binary into the four dna proteins, and synthesized it. Then they sent the synthesized DNA across the world and decoded it as the picture of the Da Vinci painting. As I said, it has already been done, because the elite have always known this. Why do you think bloodlines have been so historically important? The information, the true history of the planet, is within.
That's incredible, I'll have to look into that more!
I have to just share this! Wow...
wow... Take a look at technology 10 years ago and now. Imagine what the next 10 years will look like, I am speechless. Great post, gets you thinking about DNA +technology=
Wow that would be dope! The future holds great prosperity.
If this becomes mainstream it could completely change the way we think about data!
The future: multinational corporations cloning and breeding humans in artificial wombs and then putting them in racks to use them as literal living server farms.
Turning humans into living breathing data centers.
The Matrix was uncannily prescient.
That is such an amazing concept! Thanks for sharing! Upvoted and followed!! :)
That is amazing how quickly the technology is moving!! i think we will not live to the days when things are completely different!