With DNA storage technology, our human body is a cloud hard disk.

Release date: 2017-04-12

All information in our body consists of DNA coding. Have you ever thought that DNA can store information like a USB flash drive? According to a recent study published by the American journal Science, the storage capacity of one gram of DNA is equivalent to about 200,000 computers! The specific capacity is about 200 PB (200,000 megabytes). This is because DNA is dense, stable and durable. Experts pointed out that in the current era of information explosion, as long as the cost problem is solved, the market space for DNA storage technology will be unlimited.

DNA storage technology: not the first

In fact, DNA storage technology has already been done. In 2012, Harvard researchers used DNA to store a 50,000-word book. The European Bioinformatics Institute also stocks Shakespeare's sonnets and the tape of Martin Luther King's speech "I Have a Dream".

Breakthrough progress: Storage efficiency has increased dramatically

Although not the first, this DNA storage technology is currently undergoing a major breakthrough. Researcher Erlich, one of the authors of the study, said: This is because of the use of a coding technique that can increase DNA storage efficiency by 60% and effectively reduce the error rate in DNA storage. He is a professor of computer science at Columbia University and a core member of the New York Genome Center.

"It takes less than a second to enter data into DNA. DNA is nothing more than the result of a combination of four nucleotides. We only need to map these nucleotides to the data one by one."

Researcher Erlich said that once you master the coding method, or find DNA that meets the requirements for programming or data entry, the next step is easy. This is because the actual manufacturing process of DNA can be handled by the company.

unique charm

“Is this done to inspire people's imagination? Yes! It is to make people feel the interesting side of science!”

DNA has the advantages of high density and high stability, so DNA storage technology is still more fascinating to scientists than emerging technologies. Researcher Kosuri said: "The difficulty involved in DNA storage technology is equivalent to placing a single atom on the surface of an object." He refers to IBM, which in 1989 succeeded in spelling "IBM" with 35 helium atoms. Typeface.

He said: "Arranging atoms is not impossible, but it must be done using extremely high imaging techniques in a vacuum close to absolute zero. This involves core technology. By contrast, our DNA technology is more practical than it, although there is certainly no floppy or USB flash drive in storage."

DNA can also store 3D images. Although holography memory and racetrack memory technology can do the same, researcher Kosuri says that DNA technology can store much higher densities than they do.

Overcoming technical difficulties

However, the DNA synthesis process is very difficult. Researcher Kosuri said: "It is difficult, in the DNA synthesis process, about 5% of the time, will lose a randomly synthesized DNA. Moreover, not only the difficulty of synthesis, but also the reading of DNA is a problem. If there is a code Technology can avoid this loss, so DNA storage technology will become much simpler and more demanding."

The study published by the US Science magazine did implement this coding technique. Researcher Kosuri said the technology could make mistakes in DNA synthesis easy to accept. This is due to a special coding technique that is used to transmit digital information, usually in the event of a connection interruption, such as playing Youtube video on a smartphone. According to Erlich, this means that this coding technique can handle DNA that is much lower in quality than the DNA used in the study.

Researcher Kosuri was not involved in the study, but he was the first author of the 2012 Harvard University research report and is now a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Gras, a chemical engineer at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, also participated in the study. He said that the research team successfully stored and restored an operating system in DNA, which is an "elegant achievement." He also said: "I use 'DNA' every day, so I understand that the project must be foolproof." Erlich said that they deliberately put the operating system into the DNA. "If you don't restore the file perfectly, you might damage something. But we just want to prove that we are not afraid to put this potentially damaging content into DNA."

Kosuri also agrees that this method is very efficient: "I think they have adopted the correct experimental test algorithm. They chose the algorithm and it looks very effective."

Huge cost

In the eyes of chemical engineer Grass, the cost of synthesizing DNA is greater than the cost of organizing DNA. He said: "Although the cost of organizing DNA is too high to be practical, it is now cheaper to insert nanopore into a computer for DNA programming. But the cost of synthesizing DNA is small. Still very high."

Researcher Kosuri also said: "The only obstacle to the large-scale application of DNA storage technology is that its cost is too high. Our research reports on the coding, coding, and reliability of this code. Answer. However, the only cost problem is that we can't solve it now."

Grass believes that in order for DNA to store information for hundreds of years, it must use other means to immobilize DNA. He explained that genetic material can be fixed in animal bones and fossils of animals and plants, but free DNA is different and unstable. If you put it in the lab, the information inside will begin to be destroyed after one year.

Prospects: still clear

Researcher Kosuri is no longer engaged in DNA storage technology research, but he is still optimistic about the development of this technology. He said: "The cost of millions of times sounds scary, but in the past 15 years, we have reduced the cost to one millionth of the original. Now, not only the DNA, but also the synthetic DNA. The cost has also dropped."

Researcher Erlich憧憬 In the future, someone can invent a “process dedicated to DNA storage that allows us to quickly synthesize inferior DNA”, thereby reducing costs. He said: "We can extract the DNA with uneven quality first, and then gradually correct it according to the coding method. This is our future research direction."

The current research is a good start. Researchers have stored a lot of content in DNA that can sensitively reduce storage errors, including: an operating system, a computer virus, a $50 Amazon gift shopping card, and the world's first in France in 1895. The film "Arrival of a train at La Ciotat", a space-plated "Pionner" piece of gold-plated aluminum plate with human messages, and the American mathematician, founder of information theory, Claude Elwood · A research report published by Claude Elwood Shannon in 1948.

Researcher Erlich said: "Someone asked me, 'How can you save the video into DNA?' This is also the question I want to explain to my 6-year-old son."

Source: 36Kr

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