Can you imagine data being stored in the form of DNA? Yes, researchers have made it possible and now you will be storing data in the form of DNA within next 10 years and so from now.
The problem of what to do with the world’s days is still to be solved. Expensive and bulky hard drives, Magnetic tapes and flash drives are few options but there is said to be zettabyte’s worth of data estimated around these days.
The data in DNA can last for almost forever according to the research by Scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). They think they have successfully come up with the idea of storing MP3, PDF and text files safely in DNA which doesn’t ever require power.
You might be thinking about how much this storage is? Let me tell you even considering it limitless is not wrong. You can store as much as 100 million hours of HD video in a cup of DNA.
Nick Goldman of EMBL-EBI explains:
“We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from wooly mammoth bones, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it,” he further added, “It’s also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy.”
The problem for now is that cup of DNA no doubt can store immense amount of data but it is extensively expensive too. Synthesising DNA from encoded information is a hugely intensive operation. But researchers hope that this option will come down in price within ten years which they are expecting as the time to invest precious data.