Is DNA the Future of Data Storage?

Could the future of data storage be DNA? It’s the original format after all, storing the information needed to build every living thing. and it has a handful of qualities that would make it perfect to store all the digital information in our world. With recent advances in DNA sequencing and DNA printing, it’s technically possible. But there are a few obstacles to overcome before this sci-fi sounding tech can become a household reality.
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Credits:
Executive Producer:
Matthew Radcliff
Producers:
Elaine Seward
Andrew Sobey
Darren Weaver
Host:
Alex Dainis
Scientific Consultants:
Mark Bathe, PhD
Karin Strauss, PhD
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Reactions is a production of the American Chemical Society.
© 2022 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.
Additional Sources:
lewisdgavin.medium.com/google....
www.genengnews.com/topics/omi...
brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/art...
phys.org/news/2017-03-short-m...
www.twistbioscience.com/blog/...
www.twistbioscience.com/blog/....
accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/....
www.nature.com/scitable/defin...
www.twistbioscience.com/blog/....
www.twistbioscience.com/blog/....
www.genengnews.com/topics/omi...
www.nature.com/articles/s4156...
www.genengnews.com/topics/omi...
www.genengnews.com/topics/omi...
www.nature.com/articles/s4158...
cen.acs.org/biological-chemis...
dnastoragealliance.org/why/

[@enihil7713]

I love how you actually explain the subprocesses instead of just glossing over them and making us search elsewhere to find out!

[@user-bp8yg3ko1r]

This was super interesting, enjoyed watching this a lot! Extremely well presented, thank you, Alex!

[@AlexDainisPhD]

I'm so glad you enjoyed it!!

[@joephalarope6880]

This will be the pinnacle of humanity! Your videos always make me smile, thank you)👍

[@IanGrams]

This was an excellent and timely overview as a coworker was just wondering about this topic and I had the perfect video to send them. Thanks Dr. Dainis and Reactions crew!

[@ACSReactions]

We love to hear this-thanks for watching!

[@xBris]

The biggest hurdle is the synthesis. Sequencing is getting exponentially better over time, but the synthesis barely evolved over the last decades. Chemistry is - unfortunately - not the answer here and we need more biochemical methods.

[@hotshotgolfer3079]

Well Done. I am doing some reading on this subject this weekend. Sincerely happy I watched this presentation.

[@KrashFries]

Imagine if we compressed the entire internet into a tiny test tube somewhere and some hacker manages to break the system by printing a swimming pool’s worth of cat pictures.

[@avi12]

I think there will be two competing storage solutions in the future: DNA and light storage

[@jeffbrownstain]

I don't think it will even be a debate. One of those two is easier to implement and has current realworld and practical applications. The other one is the topic of this speculative video.

[@perryallen9058]

These are incredible videos! I'm so glad I stumbled upon your channel

[@universx9645]

Insanely good video! It's sad it has so little views...

[@smrutiranjanswain869]

Excellent explanation. Thanks

[@abrar190]

Awesome 😎 and Good Sharing 💗🌹👌

[@larva5606]

Thanks for sharing. Any links to places we can stay on top of any developments regarding this topic?

[@Ceelvain]

DNA data storage seems awesome. But have other molecular data storage been explored? Nature has proven suboptimal countless times. And we do not have exactly the same requirement for data storage as life does for doing its life things (survive, replicate, fight off opponents, and so on). Granted, with DNA, life already made some tools to deal with it, and we made quite some more in the past century. But maybe something simpler could be better? I dunno.

[@HMAOO86]

Also, coding DNA would be a medical revolution!

[@vast634]

That indirectly highlights how game changing the invention of the printing press was.

[@jeffbrownstain]

Who anywhere ever debates such a topic? There's pretty much three big inventions EVER: fire, wheel, printing press. Everything else besides the nuke has been a footnote. Tf is wrong with the quality of comments on this channel, you'd think a video talking about dna data storage wouldn't have a bunch of idiots as its only commenters.

[@vast634]

@@jeffbrownstain The most impactful invention on civilization was actually the Haber-Bosch process to industrially produce ammonia. Thats the invention that allowed the population to grow by billons.

[@anushreevirtualgaming226]

I have selected this topic for my seminar report and Presentaion is goinh yo happen tommorow, If i have a ppt on this toic I will be grateful for such amzaing content u provided for free......Thnaks u very much ........

[@Haileyhamm77]

I feel like she’s trying to explain how the internet works to me in 1875, and my eyes are starting to cross trying to keep up🤣

[@dharanimurugan5887]

Good explanation need this in a pdf format can you please🙏 this will more useful to me

[@miketyson8236]

Very interesting, but could you explain how did you converted the file into 0s and 1s at the 6:00 minute?

[@jonsnow7844]

Are you serious? Hexdump.

[@stephanieclaro9246]

(G)reat (C)hannel! (T)hat‘s (A)mazing! 🤯🧬

[@victororozco7727]

When my Play Station gets DNA for memory, it will still not be enough

[@DukeBG]

I think informational science parts of this video could be done better, but the cute picture of the dog fixed everything

[@Sgt-Gravy]

Sounds good in theory but low hopes for it working in practice.

[@XSpImmaLion]

"Only" 20Tb? xD Holy crap! And here I am feeling I'm way overboard with my measly 3.5Tb NAS.... well, ok, I don't have an KZbin channel to run. Anyways, great explainer! I've heard of DNA storage before but never explained this deeply. As tech giants are still using tape based and magnetic storage for deep storage, with a few operations going towards chip based, there will be lots of money being put into new tech like that... but it needs to strike a right mix there, which isn't going to be easy. I think of DNA as a base framework of storage down to it's insanely low volume... we'll likely reach it first instead of any other alternative because of the entire structure already built around other applications for DNA. It might not even be the ideal way of storing computational data, but because we already have a need for reading and writing DNA anyways, we'll likely get there faster. There is one other weird thing to note about data storage and how it's moving towards DNA though... and that is, there doesn't seem to be an intermediary between what we have now, and it. Perhaps there is some research on something that I didn't hear about, but even considering stuff that didn't quite pan out, it's not exactly midway there. For instance, there's some holographic storage tech that was considered in the past, further advances in optical data storage like fluorescent discs and multi layer laser discs, further advances in magnetic and chip based storage... but those are all incremental, they wouldn't be a generational step. DNA storage on the other hand is a several fold leap that requires a whole ton of advances in biotech to reach a stage of good cold storage method... but there is nothing there for fast access. It's like, I don't even need tens of petabytes on a gram of storage lasting for thousands of year... a shoebox sized Petabyte storage lasting a lifetime would fulfill the needs of the vast majority of people - but there doesn't seem to be anything there for that yet, not even theoretical, not even in early research stages. Which is a bit weird considering how much of a need there is for it, datacenters and all. Not that I know of anyways, if anyone knows something in this line please share.

[@Ceelvain]

Honnestly, I used floppy disks until 2006 - 2007. USB sticks became mainstream shortly after that.

[@MrMysticphantom]

DNA storage has one big limitation. It only has 1 usecase, and that is data archiving. It is physically impossible to have that system deal with fast enough reads that happen several times a day, let alone minutes or seconds. DNA will degrade very fast per read if you think about it. So for an application/program it would be a very bad idea. However, long term storage data that gets accessed maybe once in years, and loading the data in speeds isnt as high a priority, its an excellent idea

[@manticore4952]

We said the same thing about pretty much every single storage medium at one stage.

[@FlatEarthKiller]

DNA could theoretically duplicate and use the duplicate for reading while keeping the original dna intact.

[@Gsus__17]

those problems can be solved , it would only take DNA duplication technologies and rapid DNA readers

[@grantmisinzo]

Modern DNA sequencing technologies, such as those based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) and nanopore sequencing, have significantly improved sequencing speeds over the years. These technologies can read DNA sequences at rates ranging from hundreds of megabases per second to gigabases per second.

[@MisterBones223]

If I could store the library of babel in my house, I can die happily.

[@idobooks909]

Yes! My new purpose in life.

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

Addressing and reading it would be a challenge, amirite?

[@nikokapanen82]

Theoretical maximum is a zettabyte per gram. That is a billion terabytes, thousands of years of 4k videos

[@GrantSR]

3:43 - Wait! Y'all might want to consult with your biology grad-student friends. Chickens ARE dinosaurs.

[@Haileyhamm77]

I can hardly grasp this concept if at all, but that sounds like a potential whole new area of a black market😆🤣

[@wanderingfido]

I think this is a problem for AI to figure out. I'm too old and chronically ill. I need Tylenol. Unless somebody can resequence my DNA so I can once again bust a move, I'll be downstairs feeding me face. In the hopes it helps my three-day-long migraine. BYE.

[@DanielDogeanu]

This is awesome, but needs to be a lot more orderly and reliable and resilient to be indeed used as storage. Plenty of time for scientists to solve these problems by 2030! 😁

[@retromograph3893]

You only need one usb cable of each type

[@ayoCC]

Can DNA be constantly read and written over?

[@davidhansson7041]

Think of it more like printing a paper then faxing or scanning it. You have to print the entire DNA “write” data to it. That will create a new strand of DNA. You could reuse the bases but it’s still today a complicated process.

[@zyxvutsrqpo8537]

Wow, just think of it - I am no longer a “resource “ I’ve been promoted to a new “type of asset class”

[@nickytaylor7532]

what if it hurts?🤔 I wouldn't use it.

[@paullatham9832]

People who say they can remember past lives just might be right then :O

[@infinityzer054]

Viruses(literal), diseases, bacteria:”imma eat it”

[@Bludgeoned2DEATH2]

“Floppy disks” I think my back just broke hearing that lmao

[@jeffbrownstain]

I'm 25. My pc still has a floppy drive, one I installed myself. Stop acting like you're a revolutionary. You're just an oldhead who can't adapt, you aren't special because you know what a floppy disk is.

[@IJGR98]

[@pedrosmith221]

And then it would take 9 months to download a movie from the cloud 😅😅

[@selvammatthys]

Why would we ever do that? DNA is so sensitive to acid, base and radiation. It is the replication that makes it resilient, the medium itself is weak. Why not storing information on Atomic memory instead? You have way more knowledge than I ever could have but I think this is wishful thinking on your part to think we could have this outside a research lab in 10 years. (Love your channel.)

[@lukas4235]

DNA is very stable. Why would it come into contact with acid, base or radioation and why would that be more of a problem than with current systems? It allows for very long data storage that outperforms MOS-FETs in longevity and size.

[@Ceelvain]

@@lukas4235 radiations are everywhere, all the time.

[@lukas4235]

@@Ceelvain Radiation levels are too insignificant

[@jeffbrownstain]

Didn't humans figure how to literally store patterns of light inside of crystaline structures? Seems a lot more robust a computing medium than biological and degradable genetic material.

[@devluz]

7:19 I was suspicious of these claims but the movie is just 50 seconds. Kinda cheating ;)

[@dragonskunkstudio7582]

It's too temperature sensitive. One temperature mishap and all your DNA breakdown into to pablum. So that has to be more robust.

[@ireallyreallyhategoogle]

By 2030 no one will need to store that much data, everyone will just want food and shelter from the ecological disaster that will be our planet.

[@GrimLocke161]

I was hoping your next video would explore the rampant carcinogenics of glyphosate. You should really consider making amends for supporting Monsanto.

[@xBris]

Do you have a source for that? Because it sounds like nonsense.

[@GrimLocke161]

Bayer payed $10 billion to nearly a hundred thousand claimants to settle their class action suit that glyphosate caused their non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. You should also look within as to why that would be so impossible to you and commit to making drastic changes to your mindset.

[@Bludgeoned2DEATH2]

What’s your solution? Going the way of Sri Lanka?

[@GrimLocke161]

@@Bludgeoned2DEATH2 understood. I’ll block you, now.

[@ImTHECarlos98]

@@GrimLocke161 I don’t disagree with you necessarily, but don’t be such a pansy when taking criticism. 😂

[@JWentu]

0:45 wait wait wait you can't make such claims without some more details. What do you mean with "every book"? You mean "every book" once or all the copies of that book? How many Harry Potter books? seven or... billions of copies of those 7 (or whatever, sry HP fans) books?