Researchers could soon commercialize DNA-based information systems. (Representational image)
Researchers have developed a new technology that’s capable of storing data and offers computing functions as well. The technology uses DNA rather than conventional electronics.
Although, previous DNA data storage and computing technologies were able to complete some but not multiple tasks such as storing, retrieving, computing, erasing or rewriting data.
Developed by researchers from the North Carolina State University and Johns Hopkins University, the new technology is capable of solving simple sudoku and chess problems as well.
Testing suggests technology could store data securely for thousands of years
Called “primordial DNA store and compute engine,” the technology could store data securely for thousands of years in commercially available spaces without degrading the information-storing DNA, suggests testing.
In conventional computing technologies, the ways data are stored and processed are compatible with each other, according to researchers. However, in reality, data storage and data processing are done in separate parts of the computer, and modern computers are a network of complex technologies.
The new technology is made possible by using recent developments, which have enabled the creation of soft polymer materials that have unique morphologies.
“DNA computing has been grappling with the challenge of how to store, retrieve and compute when the data is being stored in the form of nucleic acids. For electronic computing, the fact that all of a device’s components are compatible is one reason those technologies are attractive,” said project leader Albert Keung, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work.
“But, to date, it’s been thought that while DNA data storage may be useful for long-term data storage, it would be difficult or impossible to develop a DNA technology that encompassed the full range of operations found in traditional electronic devices: storing and moving data; the ability to read, erase, rewrite, reload or compute specific data files; and doing all of these things in programmable and repeatable ways.”
Researchers created a network of nanoscale fibers
Keung maintained that they have demonstrated that these DNA-based technologies are viable.
Researchers have created polymer structures that they call dendricolloids – they start at the microscale but branch off from each other in a hierarchical way to create a network of nanoscale fibers.
“This morphology creates a structure with a high surface area, which allows us to deposit DNA among the nanofibrils without sacrificing the data density that makes DNA attractive for data storage in the first place,” said Orlin Velev, co-corresponding author and the S. Frank and Doris Culberson Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State.
New tech allows users to perform many of the same functions you can do with electronic devices
Keung claimed that users could put a thousand laptops’ worth of data into DNA-based storage that’s the same size as a pencil eraser. The ability to distinguish DNA information from the nanofibers it’s stored on allows researchers to perform many of the same functions you can do with electronic devices.
Kevin Lin, first author of the paper and a former Ph.D. student at NC State, claimed that users can copy DNA information directly from the material’s surface without harming the DNA.
Users can also erase targeted pieces of DNA and then rewrite to the same surface, akin to deleting and rewriting information stored on the hard drive.
“It essentially allows us to conduct the full range of DNA data storage and computing functions. In addition, we found that when we deposit DNA on the dendricolloid material, the material helps to preserve the DNA,” said Lin.
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The study titled “A Primordial DNA Store and Compute Engine” was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
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