Whatever happened to DNA-based storage research? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It seems like 6 or 7 years ago there was research into new forms of storage, using crystals or DNA that promised ultra high density storage. I know the read/write speed was not very fast, but I thought by now there would be more progress in the area. Apparently in 2021 there was a team that got a 16GB file stored in DNA. In the last month there's some company (Biomemory) that lets you store 1KB of data into DNA for $1,000, but if you want to read it, you have to send it to them. I don't understand why you would use that today.

I wonder if it will ever be viable for us to have DNA readers/writers... but I also wonder if there are other new types of data storage coming up that might be just as good.

If you know anything about the DNA research or other new storage forms, what do you think is the most promising one?

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

The truth of academia is that it is extremely slow. there are less than 20 minds total on all of earth working on this idea, separately, in different countries. And these 20 people are in their 20's, severely underpaid, don't necessarily have all the resources they want, and science may not be their #1 life priority.

anyways:

reading and writing DNA is the main driver of evolution, and it does so because it is error prone (causing mutations). You can imagine this is bad if you want to preserve the integrity of the data.

DNA storage would be okay if you were to... say archive the entire internet for future generations, or geneology records, etc. things that do not need to be written and accessed quickly or often.

this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024

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