Digital DNA storage

1. D I G I TA L D N A S T O R A G E
E M E R G I N G I N F R A S T R U C T U R E S O F T H E
F U T U R E
M O R A L S & M A C H I N E S
9 J U N E 2 0 2 1
@dinazielinski

2. Domo “Data Never Sleeps”
4 million videos
streamed
47,000 photos 456,000 tweets
69,000 hours of
video streamed
120 new
professionals
156 million
emails sent
D ATA B Y T H E M I N U T E

3. 1 ZB = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes
IDC DataAge
T H E G L O B A L D ATA S P H E R E

4. S T O R A G E V O C A B U L A R Y
Hellabyte?
1 byte = 8 bits

5. Ismaeel et al 2018

6. stone tablet
~3200 BC
2000 BC
paper
punch card
1890
compact disc
1982
floppy disk
1967
1962
cassette
1951
magnetic tape
hard drive
1956
1999
USB drive
H U M A N D E S I G N E D S T O R A G E M E D I A
SD card
1999
miniSD
2003
2004
microSD
1978
solid state drive

7. 1953 1956

8. Data
longevity
(years)
Storage density (GB/g)
1000
100
10
1
0.1 1 10 100 1E
8
1E
9
1E10
paper
microfilm
DNA in silica
optical
magnetic tape
hard disc drive
solid state drive
adapted from Chen et al. 2019

9. 6 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑝
𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑒
x
1 𝑏𝑦𝑡𝑒
4 𝑏𝑝
1.5 GB / cell
30,000,000,000,000 cells

10. WRITE STORE READ
A
00 01 10 11
FILE:
DNA: C G T

11. bomb.zip

13. 2.14 Megabytes

14. 600,000,000
100 TB Flash Drives
200,000,000
330 TB Tape Cartridges

15. ~ 3.5 kg of DNA
60 ZB of data
2.25 kg 2.25 kg
01 11 10 00

16. >100 years
17000 PB/g
$3500/MB
read=hours
write=hours
10-50 years
3 GB/cm²
$0.05/GB
read=seconds
write=seconds

17. A P R I N T I N G
R E V O L U T I O N

18. ARCHIVAL
STORAGE -18°C ~ 0°F
> 2 million years