Like the rate As humanity’s creation of data increases exponentially with the rise of AI, scientists have become interested in DNA as a means of storing digital information. After all, DNA is nature’s way of storing data. It encodes genetic information and determines the pattern of every living thing on earth.
And DNA is at least 1,000 times more compact than SSDs. To demonstrate the extent to which researchers have already coded all of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, 52 pages of music by MozartAnd an episode of the Netflix show “Biohackers” in tiny amounts of DNA.
But these were research projects or media stunts. DNA data storage isn’t exactly mainstream yet, but it could get close. You can now buy what could be the first commercially available book written about DNA. Today, Asimov Press launched an anthology of biotechnology essays and science fiction stories encoded in strands of DNA. For $60, you can get a physical copy of the book as well as the nucleic acid version: a metal capsule filled with dried DNA.
To encode the book in DNA, Asimov Press worked with Boston-based Catalog, which created approximately 500,000 unique DNA molecules to encode the book’s 240 pages, representing 481,280 bytes of data.
Traditional DNA data storage works by converting the binary code of 0s and 1s in 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 combinatorial assembly, which the company likens to Gutenberg printing. In the same way that movable letters can be arranged to form words, Catalog has created an alphabet of pieces of DNA that can be put together to represent bits. The company manufactures these DNA extracts in bulk, then uses enzymes to encode information into them. David Turek, Catalog’s chief technology officer, said it cost a few thousand dollars to encode the book in DNA and make 1,000 copies.
“This is a case where you encode something in DNA once and you can create as many replicas as you want using the tools of molecular biology,” he explains. “It’s pretty easy to do that in volume.”
In 2023, French company Biomemory began offering a $1,000 DNA storage card that allows customers to store about a kilobyte of data, the equivalent of a short email, their choice. At the time, CEO Erfane Arwani told WIRED that the offering was an experiment to gauge consumer interest in DNA data storage. “We wanted to demonstrate that our process is ready to be shown to the world,” he said.
The cards were expensive, however, because DNA synthesis remains a fairly slow and expensive process. Catalog claims that its combinatorial approach is more efficient. Making identical copies of the same book also lowered the price.
Once coding was done by Catalog, the DNA molecules were dried into powder and shipped to France, where biological storage company Imagene packaged the molecules in stainless steel capsules with an inert internal atmosphere, meaning that There is no oxygen or humidity inside. In this state, the DNA it contains can be preserved for thousands of years.
