Say hello to the epi-bit, a new approach to DNA data storage Scientists have developed a new approach to using DNA as a data storage medium, slashing the cost and time of writing to the biological substance. For decades, scientists have been studying the potential of deoxyribonucleic acid, which contains the genetic instructions for the development and function of an organism, as a …
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The main issue it's a bugger to read.
Nature uses transcriptase to copy segments to RNA fragments and then the ribosomes deal with those to make proteins etc. There other ways it handles DNA but that is the most common.
We have to use sodding great machines to duplicate and read the DNA strands, slowly, very slowly.
Fun fact - If you took all the cellular nuclear DNA from a human and stretched it out end-to-end. That person would be very dead. Also the strand would reach from here to the sun, roughly 13 times.
If you took ALL the DNA in a human including mitochondrial DNA, the DNA in all the bacteria and the various microscopic critters that live in and on us it would probably exceed 40 AU in length
> The main issue it's a bugger to read.
That too. It's a highly specialized encoding system, fine-tuned over many millions of years for one and only task. It's a bugger to do anything else with it. Even Nature realized it, and when it needed something to store/process information with, it choose a different system.
There are more practical reasons. This is a bit like saying "get 12% extra RAM by using those ECC bits".
Biology doesn't put methyl groups on DNA for prettyfication, it is a marker for a purpose (e.g. defence against pathogens, turning some genes on or off in response to environment... there is a whole field called epigenetics dealing with this). So if you use a biological system to process or reproduce this DNA, you'll have to be sure the data isn't erased or corrupted. At that point you might be better just redesigning the system from the ground up with non-natural bases etc.
Incidentally if you want to compare I'd say DNA is more like tape backup, as it not infrequently needs to be unwound from histones to be read. It's also more stable then you would think, because of the deoxy function which slows down non-biological degradation hugely. RNA, especially mRNA is more like RAM, it is used for working copies and has a much shorter biological lifetime.
Of course it is the sort of work that raises institutional profiles and gets good publicity, so can't blame the boffins for milking it a bit.
I'm reminded of the Colossus computer used for code breaking. It's optical paper tape reader was 5000 characters a second in WWII.The tape moved about 30mph*
OTOH very compact. True (potentially) 3d storage.
*AFAIK an unbeaten record. In the early 60's a Scandinavian company did one at 2000cps and that was thought amazing. Ultra was still completely secret at that time.
I thought it was about better ways to store MY DNA, hopefully to be resurrected into a better world.
(Seeing as only a better world that hasn't gone full dystopian apocalypse, which we're currently on track for, would be able to raise me from my DNA. Never mind my memories, happy to replace them with how to fly my private space yacht).
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