Future of Data: Encoded in DNA

Future of Data: Encoded in DNA

In the latest effort to contend with exploding quantities of digital data, researchers encoded an entire book into the genetic molecules of DNA, the basic building block of life, and then accurately read back the text. The experiment, reported in the journal Science, may point a way toward eventual data-storage devices with vastly more capacity for their size than today’s computer chips and drives.

“A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet,” said Harvard University molecular geneticist George Church, the senior researcher in the group that translated the English text of a coming book on genomic engineering into actual DNA.