Using DNA for compact data storage

Nature : A team from Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities is developing an efficient method of data storage that uses DNA. Although the idea is not newâmdash;the technique was first demonstrated in 1988âmdash;the researchers have vastly improved the density of information that can be stored. So far, they have managed to encode the HTML version of a forthcoming 5-megabit book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves (Basic Books, in press), including both text and jpeg images. “In theory, two bits of data can be incorporated per nucleotideâmdash;the single base unit of a DNA stringâmdash;so each gram of the double-stranded molecule could store 455 exabytes of data (1 exabyte is 10 ¹⁸ bytes),” writes Monya Baker for Nature. Thus the method could far surpass inorganic data-storage devices such as flash memory and hard disks. Because DNA storage and retrieval are still extremely labor-intensive, it will work best for long-term storage, possibly as long as centuries.