It is incredibly stable? We better don't tell evolution.
Considering that most of the mutations are random, the same ecc algorithms we currently use should ensure data integrity.
Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
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Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#12It is incredibly stable? We better don't tell evolution.
Error correction redundancy to any level of reliability you want takes log(N) extra storage. My question would be what the access speeds are. If you have to read it by running it through a trillion PCR test tubes, this isn't exactly practical.
Microfluidics or lab-on-a-chip are the latest advances: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/84340-new-silicon-chip-...
The progress in this field has been far better than Moore's Law [1] so it could be very practical.
[1] Excellent TED talk on it too by Richard Resnick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8bsCiq6hvM
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#13I don't understand how this density could be so much better than something like flash drives. Aren't they also on the same scale of nanometers?
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#14It is incredibly stable? We better don't tell evolution.
The case the article was making was for storage on dead cells.
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
IANA DNA expert, but they still seem to be ordered [1]. So a possible scheme to increase data density could be: AT = 00 TA = 01 CG = 10 GC = 11 The trick would be to always correctly identify which is the left and which is the right strand. I don't know if that is possible in practice though. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair#Examples
Ribosomes seem to manage just fine. :) You just encode a big marker (making sure it's not a palindrome-paired version of itself!) as a header. If you see that, it's a correct order. If not, it's not.
This header idea is great because then you only need to keep one strand and can toss the other, potentially quadrupling the amount of data storage (I'm assuming you can keep single strands of DNA stable).
[Left strand]
A = 00
T = 01
C = 10
G = 11
[Right strand]
T = 00
A = 01
G = 10
C = 11
Anyone know these guys at Harvard, b/c this might be a way to put, at most, 2800 terabytes in a gram? (I don't know how long the header sequences would have to be).
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#16Can we encode all of human knowledge into the DNA of some organism? How can organisms access data stored in their DNA? Imagine being born with knowledge of every Wikipedia article, or even every website. What would that be like?
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#17If you store data onto 50 DNA strands, can you always read back all the data from all 50 strands, or does one need to store multiple copies of each in case the sequencer can't "find" a particular strand?
If one does need multiple copies, it would seem that this method suffers from the coupon collector's problem [1] (i.e. to collect all 50 strands requires collecting 225 random strands on average), and that the retrieval rate could be improved by using a fountain code [2], which allows each strand to simultaneously encode data at multiple addresses, which would decrease the number of strands required to be sampled to only slightly more than the number of strands worth of data requested.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collectors_problem [2] http://blog.notdot.net/2012/01/Damn-Cool-Algorithms-Fountain...
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#18I don't understand how this density could be so much better than something like flash drives. Aren't they also on the same scale of nanometers?
DNA is 3D. Flash drives are 2D.
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#19Can we encode all of human knowledge into the DNA of some organism? How can organisms access data stored in their DNA? Imagine being born with knowledge of every Wikipedia article, or even every website. What would that be like?
Education would no longer be necessary or valued.
Experience and creativity would be what everyone garners to get a job.
Re: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram
#20To read the data out are they basically doing de novo assembly on the sequenced reads? How are they handling all of the errors in gene sequencing? How about assembly errors? Long repeats?