Start-up company 'to save data such as text and voice in DNA in a cheap manner' is born

by Caroline Davis 2010

Electronic media such as CD, HDD, and SSD are commonly used as recording media for text and audio data. Catalog , a startup company in Boston, was established with the aim of "storing data in DNA in an inexpensive way".

Boston startup Catalog has come up with a cheap way of storing information in DNA - Quartz
https://qz.com/1314803/storing-information-on-dna-is-now-cheap-enough-to-be-viable/

A huge amount of digital data is newly created every day in the world, and it is said that human beings produced 16.1 trillion GB of digital data only in one year of 2016. The amount of digital data produced in one year is expected to be ten times as large as 2016 by 2025. As of 2018, many of the data generated are stored in an external hard disk or a huge server room, but since these data servers occupy a large space and need to be replaced at periods of several years to ten years, It has problems that it is not suitable for long-term preservation.

In recent years, the idea of ​​" DNA storage " that stores digital data in DNA has been researched and it is getting real. The amount of data that can be stored in DNA is said to exceed the hard disk.

What is "DNA storage" that can store worldwide data with ultrahigh capacity exceeding the hard disk, low maintenance cost?

It is a DNA storage that attracts a great deal of attention, such as Microsoft plans to utilize DNA storage for cloud services, but it takes a considerable expense to create DNA that preserves digital data consisting of 0's and 1's . In order to record 1 minute of stereo sound data in DNA, it is necessary to write data to more than 1.5 million base pairs, which cost about 100,000 dollars (about 11 million yen).

Catalog of a start-up company established by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is trying to reduce the cost required for DNA storage. Catalog devised a method of stitching DNA fragments of 20 to 30 base pairs with enzymes rather than storing information on one long DNA strand. The feature of this method is that not only data written in base pair but also 'sequence in which DNA fragments are stitched' plays the role of information. The Catalog explains about this mechanism, "It is like an English text that makes various sentences with 26 alphabets." By using the newly invented method, it seems that 1 MB of digital data can be stored in DNA at a cost of 3,000 yen or less.

by Sascha Pohflepp

Catalog has already stored text data of Douglas Adams ' novel " Galactic Hitchhiker's Guide " and Robert Frost 's poem " The Road Not Taken " in the DNA storage on June 26, 2018 We announced that.

In addition, Catalog has also announced that it receives support of a total of 9 million dollars (about 1 billion yen) from various venture capital enterprises, and it is said that in 2019, it will bring it to the state of commercial use. Companies wanting to use DNA storage need to submit the desired data to the Catalog. Catalog converts the data into 0 and 1 codes, stores data in DNA by assigning pairs of 0 and 1 to each nucleotide of DNA, and the DNA storing the data is larger in the restaurant etc. Can be stored in the refrigerator.

To decode 0 and 1 data stored in DNA storage as voice or text, a special key is required. In the future, we are thinking about "inserting the key to decipher DNA storage data in DNA data itself" in the Catalog. If this attempt goes well, DNA data can be read even if dozens of generations are going down, or if non-human aliens discover DNA storage.

by Venkataramesh Kommoju