Microsoft works on DNA storage

Microsoft works on DNA storage

Create a machine that takes almost a day to write a word

  The business in the cloud has almost destroyed the world of hard drives, information in bits is stored on the network. The multinationals of the United States are looking for other means of income and have put their eyes on the DNA, why not store it?

This question has been raised by researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft engineers and has the solution. However, the idea is not new, since in 2012 a team from Harvard Medical School was able to codify a 53,000 word book and 11 images in DNA. To them, in 2017, a work was added by French researchers who managed to encode digital information in synthetic DNA.

  The milestone of Microsoft and researchers in Washington is to create an automated system. "Our ultimate goal is to put into production a system that, for the end user, looks a lot like any other cloud storage service: the bits are sent to a data center and stored there, and then appear when the client he wants them, "says Microsoft's principal investigator Karin Strauss. "To do that, we need to show that this is practical from an automation perspective."

The information is stored in synthetic DNA molecules created in a laboratory, "not in the DNA of human beings or other living beings, and can be encrypted before it is sent to the system," Microsoft adds.

According to the company's researchers, automation is another key piece of that puzzle, since it would allow storage on a commercial scale and make it more affordable. "Having an automated system to do the repetitive work allows those of us who work in the lab to have a broader vision and start putting together new strategies, to innovate essentially much faster," explains Bichlien Nguyen, a Microsoft researcher.

However, the research and automation of the sequencing should be improving and reducing recording times. His first recording took 21 hours in which he converted the word Hello into DNA and then return it to bits.

The automated DNA data storage system uses software developed by the Microsoft team and the University of Washington that converts the ones and zeros of the digital data into the As, Ts, Cs and G, which form the basic components of DNA

When the system needs to retrieve the information, it adds other chemicals to properly prepare the DNA and uses microfluidic pumps to push the fluids to other parts of the system that "read" the DNA sequences and convert them back into information that a computer can understand

As explained to Nature Sciences Report, in DNA format the word "hello" in bit is 01001000 01000101 01001100 01001100 01001111 and it occupied approximately 1 mg of DNA. However, it is not the first test of the Molecular Information Systems Laboratory, "it has already demonstrated that it can store photographs of cats, great literary works, pop videos and recordings in DNA, and recover those files without errors in a research environment. », Says Microsoft. According to their data, they have been able to store 1 gigabyte of data in the DNA.