DNA data hard drives might just be one of the most important discovery or invention of this century. As the core concept behind this termnology is storage of data on DNA of any organism.
Just by looking around we can find many different species of animals and plants. Each have their separate set of DNA present within their cells. This DNA contains the vital information required to maintain the body or structure of the organism. Scientist have known that DNA consists information. And they have been studying this information for medicinal purposes for a while now.
The question that arose a few years back was, if we can read information from DNA; can we write it also? and if we can do this easily at a rapid pace, can we turn this into a storage medium ?
The theory behind DNA data hard drives
The theory behind DNA data hard drives is just that! We can write information at molecular level on DNA and this process is called DNA modification. Since we are able to achieve this. The only hassle now was to do this more precisely and at a more rapid pace.
This is the stage at which the current scientific breakthrough has happened. According to scientificamerican ;
DNA consists of long chains of the nucleotides A, T, C and G . They are life’s information-storage medium. Data can be stored in sequence of these letters, turning DNA into a new information. It is already routinely sequenced (read), synthesized (written to) and accurately copied with ease. DNA is also incredibly stable, as has been demonstrated by the complete genome sequencing of a fossil horse that lived more than 500,000 years ago. And storing it does not require much energy.
This means that the lifespan of data stored on DNA far exceeds that of any electronic devices present today in the world. This is amazing as data mostly needs to be stored in huge data warehouse throughout the world for historic information which can easily be stored and kept aside on such DNA storage devices.
How they work
The DNA data hard drives could work in a similar fashion as any other storage medium such as a USB flash drive, laptop hard disk, etc. The only change being, that the data is stored on a DNA material rather than a electrical or magnetic storage.
These storage peripheral could theorotically attach to any of our current personal computers or phones. The main thing to notice is that the data storage capacity on DNA is far greater than that of electronic storage.
Here is a chart just to illustrate this ;
Future possibilities
Keeping in mind the upper chart, it is only a matter of time when DNA storage takes over the current storage. Since, this is the era of IT and we are only stepping into the era of AI (artificial intelligence).
The DNA data hard drives could be a game changer in future with most of the world’s leading IT companies switching to it.