Like the ratio As humanity's data generation increases exponentially with the development of AI, scientists have become interested in DNA as a way to store digital information. After all, DNA is nature's way of storing data. It encodes genetic information and determines the blueprint of every living thing on earth.
And DNA is at least 1,000 times more compact than a solid-state drive. To demonstrate just how compact, previous researchers have encoded all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, 52 pages of Mozart's musicAnd an episode of the Netflix show “Biohackers” into a small amount of DNA.
But these are research projects or media tricks. DNA data storage isn't exactly widespread yet, but it may be getting closer. Now you can buy the first commercial book written in DNA. Today, Asimov Press released a collection of essays on biotechnology and science fiction stories encoded with DNA sequences. For $60, you can get a physical copy of the book along with the nucleic acid version—a metal capsule filled with dried DNA.
To encode the book with DNA, Asimov Press worked with the Boston-based company Catalog, which created approximately 500,000 unique DNA molecules to encode the book's 240 pages, representing 481,280 bytes of data. material.
Traditional DNA data storage works by converting the binary 0s and 1s of a digital file into As, Cs, Gs, and Ts—the building blocks of DNA. Custom DNA strands are chemically synthesized letter by letter to match the desired sequence.
Instead, Catalog uses a method called assembly assembly, which the company likens to the Gutenberg press. Similar to the way movable letters were arranged to form words, Catalog created an alphabet of DNA segments that could be assembled to represent bits. The company mass-produces those DNA fragments and then uses enzymes to encode information into them. David Turek, Catalog's chief technology officer, said it cost only thousands of dollars to encode the book with DNA and make 1,000 copies.
“This is a case where you encode something in DNA once and you can make as many copies as you want using molecular biology tools,” he said. “It's easy to do this in large quantities.”
In 2023, the French company Biomemory begins supply DNA storage card worth $1,000 allows customers to store approximately one kilobyte of data, equivalent to a short email, of their choice. At the time, CEO Erfane Arwani told WIRED that the product was a test to gauge consumer interest in DNA data storage. “We wanted to demonstrate that our process was ready to introduce to the world,” he said.
However, these cards are expensive because DNA synthesis is still a fairly slow and expensive process. Catalog claims its hybrid approach is more effective. Identical copies of the same book also drive prices down.
After Catalog does the coding, the DNA molecules are dried into a powder and shipped to France, where biorepository company Imagene packs the molecules into stainless steel capsules with an inert atmosphere inside. clear, meaning there is no oxygen or moisture inside. In this state, the DNA inside can be preserved for thousands of years.