Digital DNA

Digital DNA
All the movies, images, emails and other digital data from more than 600 smartphones (10,000 gigabytes) can be stored in the faint pink smear of DNA at the end of this test tube
Image Credit: Tara Brown Photography/ University of Washington

Last year a team of researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington announced that they had stored and read back over 200 MB of digital data stored on laboratory synthesized DNA molecules. To put this in context, a typical picture on a smartphone is in the region of 3 – 5 MB. Last week another team reported that they had made further strides and have managed to store more information using DNA than was previously possible.

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