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An archive written in DNA

Nature Biotechnology volume 36, pages 236–237 (2018)Cite this article

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New research sets a world record in the volume of data stored in and retrieved from DNA.

The amount of data being generated across the sciences and beyond is exploding. In physics, for example, a single research center, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), has produced more than 100 petabytes of data that must be stored for future generations of scientists. But standard media for archiving data, such as optical discs, hard drives, and magnetic tapes, have lifetimes of only a few years. In the search for better data storage technologies, DNA—the molecule that encodes biological information with remarkable longevity and enormous information density—has emerged as a promising storage medium. Writing in this issue, Organick et al.1 tackle concerns about whether DNA-based storage can be scaled up to large amounts of data. They use their newly developed protocol to store over 200 megabytes of digital information in DNA, and to retrieve the data with no errors. The scale of DNA information storage and retrieval is unprecedented, supporting suggestions that DNA may provide a reliable and compact alternative for archiving the world's data.

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Figure 1: The principle of DNA information storage in Organick et al1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Reinhard Heckel is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA.,

    Reinhard Heckel

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  1. Reinhard Heckel
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Correspondence to Reinhard Heckel.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Heckel, R. An archive written in DNA. Nat Biotechnol 36, 236–237 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4093

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