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DNA COMPUTING

The yin–yang codec for archival DNA storage

Nature Computational Science volume 2, pages 219–220 (2022)Cite this article

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A robust and reliable codec is the backbone for any digital DNA storage. A recent work introduces a codec based on ancient Chinese philosophy, yin–yang, that outperforms other codecs in terms of reliability and physical information density.

In the modern world, whenever we use our mobile phones to click on a picture and post it on social media accounts, we do not worry about the availability of storage, as we assume that companies such as social media platforms have enough storage space. However, data storage is a burning issue, not only for these companies, but also for our society at large, as we produce a substantial amount of data daily. More specifically, we produce data in the range of a couple of exabytes (1 exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes) every day1, and the pace is accelerating: the Internet of Things (IoT) will potentially produce data in the order of geopbytes (1 geopbyte = 1 trillion exabytes). Ultimately, this poses immediate challenges related to cost and space: current data storage technologies will require a substantial amount of space to store our data, which can be fairly expensive. A promising avenue for improving our data storage capabilities is using DNA as a storage medium. For instance, one gram of DNA can store up to 455 exabytes of data2, meaning that 2 grams of DNA can store the entire Internet (which takes approximately 700 exabytes), and 1 kg of DNA can store all the data produced by humankind. However, while DNA storage might be a natural choice for our current needs, there are still some challenges to be addressed, including finding an optimal codec that can achieve high information density and provide good error tolerance. Writing in Nature Computational Science, Zhi Ping and colleagues3 present a codec based on the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang that achieves an in vivo physical information density that is close to the theoretical maximum.

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Fig. 1: The six steps of the DNA storage process.

References

  1. Marr, B. How much data do we create every day? The mind-blowing stats everyone should read. Forbes (May 2018); https://go.nature.com/3qJusli

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  3. Ping, Z. et al. Nat. Comput. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-022-00231-2 (2022).

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  1. Laboratory of Natural Information Processing, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India

    Manish K. Gupta

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  1. Manish K. Gupta
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Correspondence to Manish K. Gupta.

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Gupta, M.K. The yin–yang codec for archival DNA storage. Nat Comput Sci 2, 219–220 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-022-00235-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-022-00235-y

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