Our more and more digitized world has a knowledge storage drawback. Arduous drives and different storage media are reaching their limits, and we’re creating knowledge quicker than we are able to retailer it. Fortuitously, we do not have to look too far for an answer, as a result of nature already has a robust storage medium with DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). It’s this genetic materials that Xingyu Jiang on the Southern College of Science and Know-how in China and colleagues are utilizing to create DNA storage cassettes.
DNA is the last word knowledge storage resolution as a result of it’s compact, dense and sturdy. It will probably maintain an unlimited quantity of knowledge in a microscopic area and protect that knowledge for hundreds of years with no need electrical energy. Theoretically, the DNA in a single human cell has a capability of roughly 3.2 gigabytes, which equates to roughly 6,000 books, 1,000 items of music or two films.
Scientists have recognized about DNA’s potential as a storage resolution for a very long time, however the problem up till now has been to create a viable system that we are able to use. In a brand new examine published within the journal Science Advances, researchers describe how they made a DNA cassette much like cassette tapes that have been staples in private and automotive stereos within the Eighties.
The way it works
The staff first created the bodily tape from a polyester-nylon mix. Then they printed barcode patterns on it to make thousands and thousands of tiny, separate sections, much like folders on a pc. This lets the system discover the precise spot the place the information is saved. Accessing data has been one of many issues of earlier DNA storage methods.
To retailer a file, digital knowledge is first translated right into a DNA sequence. The 4 bases, or constructing blocks of DNA (A, G, C, and T) act as a code, much like the zeroes and ones that computer systems use. The researchers additionally coated the tape with a protecting crystalline layer to guard the DNA bonds from breaking down.
Lastly, they proved the system works by changing a digital picture into DNA, then efficiently and shortly retrieving it from the tape.
“DNA cassette tape supplies a technique for quick, compact, large-scale DNA-based chilly (sometimes accessed) or heat (wanted on demand) knowledge storage,” wrote the scientists of their paper.
If it takes off, DNA cassette expertise may provide a scalable resolution for knowledge facilities going through area and vitality constraints, doubtlessly changing huge, clunky servers with a extra environment friendly and sustainable methodology of storing the world’s data.
Written for you by our creator Paul Arnold, edited by Gaby Clark, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this text is the results of cautious human work. We depend on readers such as you to maintain impartial science journalism alive.
If this reporting issues to you,
please take into account a donation (particularly month-to-month).
You will get an ad-free account as a thank-you.
Extra data:
Jiankai Li et al, A compact cassette tape for DNA-based knowledge storage, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady3406
© 2025 Science X Community
Quotation:
DNA cassette tapes may clear up international knowledge storage issues (2025, September 11)
retrieved 14 September 2025
from https://techxplore.com/information/2025-09-dna-cassette-tapes-global-storage.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Aside from any honest dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is supplied for data functions solely.
