DNA could safely store data being generated worldwide

According to researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), a cupful of custom-built strands of DNA can encode and store 100 million hours of high-definition video in a form that requires no energy to maintain and would be stable for tens of thousands of years.

The ever-growing volume of new data is becoming a pressing problem. As more and more forms of content are created, especially in the sciences, storing this information and keeping it safe is difficult. Hard disks require power and mechanical maintenance, while magnetic tape degrades. Ironically, DNA is at the heart of the problem — sequencing genes, which is becoming increasingly vital to the health science sector, generates massive amounts of data.

However, it is possible to synthesise DNA with a defined sequence of bases — the chemical groups whose order along the DNA strand encodes information. ‘We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from bones of woolly mammoths and make sense of it,’ said research leader Nick Goldman of the EBI, which is part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.