Coming soon(ish): DNA-powered hard drives

Yes, that’s right: technology firms are experimenting with using synthetic DNA to store data. Microsoft recently announced that it is buying 10m strands of “long oligonucleotides” - molecules of DNA created in the labs of Twist Bioscience, a biotech startup based in San Francisco.

This is less loopy than it sounds. Compared to other storage formats, like magnetic disks, DNA is incredibly information-dense. A team at Harvard managed to cram 700TB into a gram of DNA in 2012. Researchers at Microsoft estimate that the limit is around 1 exabyte per cubic millimetre. That’s a billion gigabytes crammed into the space of a large grain of sand.

Another way to think about this: we could store every bit of data currently on the planet in a cubic metre of DNA - roughly the same size as a small refrigerator - and still have room to spare.

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