Research that DNA will store incredible amounts of data was one of the most important issues in the world of technology and science last year. In a new study on Deoxyribo nucleic acid, described as the world’s smallest hard disk, a sequencing form consisting of chemically modified nucleotide bases was created to store more information in DNA. Thanks to this development, the data storage capacity of DNA has increased twice as before. For a better understanding of the subject, let’s take a brief look at past research.
Developing the space required to accommodate the ever-increasing size of data around the world is just one of the important issues that scientists are interested in. Because, with the automation and digitalization making its impact felt, the amount of data produced every day until 2025 will increase globally. 463 exabytes expected to be achieved. At this point, the devices used must be able to compete with large data sizes in order to save information without losing it. That’s where DNA comes in because it’s just One gram of DNA is capable of storing approximately 215 million GB of data.. On the other hand, the only problem is that there is a form of DNA storage that will reach the end user.
In the first months of 2020, when the world was in the shadow of the pandemic, scientists DORIS (Dynamic Operations and Reusable Information Storage) They had developed an advanced DNA storage mechanism called DORIS basically emerged as an important innovation on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which is the basis of today’s DNA data storage systems, and was seen as a remarkable event in the scientific community. With DORIS, we can say that the first hopes of hiding information in DNA have blossomed.
In 2021, right after DORIS, he created a tool to overcome some of the difficulties of the technique of storing data on DNA via PCR. DENSe (DNA Enrichment and Nested Separation) This tool, named as DNA, provided access to a preview of the data contained in DNA. Without DENSe, accessing a desired data required sequencing the entire DNA sequence, which was a huge waste of time. For example, let’s say you want to find an image file with JPEG extension in DNA. But finding the image without DENSe required opening all the files and inspecting them one by one. DENSe, on the other hand, presents a small version of all files as a preview, making it easier to find the desired data.
Increased Storage Size of DNA
Taking the technology we talked about back so far, a multidisciplinary team from the University of Illinois, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Stanford University, in addition to DORIS and DENSe, to develop a new sequencing method with the goal of turning DNA into a robust and sustainable data storage technology. got together. Sequencing, which means determining the order of the nucleotide bases in the DNA molecule, is a method of storing information; We can define nucleotide bases as storage units.
According to the study, the researchers were able to expand the normally large information storage capacity of DNA by first adding seven synthetic nucleobases to the existing four-letter sequence (A, G, C, and T) in DNA. On the other hand, a new sequencing method was developed to make this size increase usable. In the process, the team was the first in the world to use modified nucleobases to store data in DNA, but these compounds also caused another problem. Accessing the data became impossible, as none of the existing technologies could interpret chemically modified synthetic DNA strands. To overcome this challenge, the team created a new DNA sequence reading and processing system using machine learning. In the article published at the end of the research It has been stated that the size of data that DNA can accommodate has increased.
Among the innovations known as green technology, DNA data storage seems to make a name for itself more in the coming years. We will continue to share developments on the subject. Do not forget to share your thoughts in the comments.
