DNA Breakthrough Means Endless Storage Potential

An incredible new breakthrough in the most advanced computer hard drive technology currently being researched has seen the creation of a genetic storage device, which has thus far been able to download all of Shakespeare’s sonnets onto strands of manmade DNA, alongside a short excerpt of Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. The scientists working on the technology were then able to re-download the information and decode it perfectly, reproducing Shakespeare’s work accurately. Turning information like this into synthetic DNA which can be decoded later is a huge breakthrough in the world of technology and could lead to unimaginably advanced computer memory systems in the future.

It is thought that the results of the landmark study, a collaboration between British scientists and a company based in California, could eventually lead to computer storage solutions that could store 100 million hours of HD video in a mass of synthetic DNA no bigger than a cup. The devices could theoretically store every single film and television programme that has ever been created, and so the possibilities for the future of this technology are endless. 

Aside from the obvious and incredible advantages of being able to store vast amounts of information on a minuscule surface, the solution also has great advantages over its main competitor, magnetic tape. This type of memory solution will degrade within a decade, whereas the DNA memory being mooted as a potential replacement now can last for many thousands of years, existing on no constant power source in the way that computer hard disks do now. The reasoning behind the experimental techniques was that scientists knew that DNA was a secure and robust way to store information that would last until the next age; in the same way that scientists now can extract DNA information from the bones of woolly mammoths or other prehistoric creatures, scientists in the future will be able to decode this DNA and find Shakespeare’s sonnets or Martin Luther King’s speech.

It is predicted that in ten years, more efficient and cheap DNA sequencing could make this type of storage a real solution for PC and Apple computers, while the future of synthetic DNA storage will see incredibly rich archives of data storage for time periods of thousands of years on tiny strands of manmade genetic material. In a few hundred years, every human could have access to every video clip or song ever made at the touch of a button or the click of a finger, all due to this incredible innovation in DNA and computer technology.

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