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Title: DNA Cassette Tape Can Store Every Song Ever Recorded

Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/10/...

Researchers in China have developed a "DNA cassette," a retro-styled plastic
tape embedded with synthetic DNA strands that can store up to 36 petabytes of
digital data -- enough to hold every song ever recorded. New Scientist
reports: Xingyu Jiang at the Southern University of Science and Technology in
Guangdong, China, and his colleagues created the cassette by printing
synthetic DNA molecules on to a plastic tape. "We can design its sequence so
that the order of the DNA bases (A, T, C, G) represents digital information,
just like 0s and 1s in a computer," he says. This means it can store any type
of digital file, whether text, image, audio or video. One problem with
previous DNA storage techniques is the difficulty in accessing data, so the
team then overlaid a series of barcodes on the tape to assist with retrieval.
"This process is like finding a book in the library," says Jiang. "We first
need to find the shelf corresponding to the book, then find the book on the
corresponding shelf." The tape is also coated in what the researchers
describe as "crystal armor" made of zeolitic imidazolate, which prevents the
DNA bonds from breaking down. That means the cassette could store data for
centuries without deteriorating. While a traditional cassette tape could
boast around 12 songs on each side, 100 meters of the new DNA cassette tape
can hold more than 3 billion pieces of music, at 10 megabytes a song. The
total data storage capacity is 36 petabytes of data -- equivalent to 36,000
terabyte hard drives. The research has been published in the journal Science
Advances.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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