Microsoft could make DNA storage a reality

Microsoft Research has found a way to write and read data faster in DNA material, which brings us closer to offering DNA storage services and devices for commercial purposes.

Until now, creating and distributing a viable DNA data storage medium has been very difficult due to the amount of data that can be stored, as well as the transfer rate - in order for these two indicators to be high, special storage conditions for the DNA material are necessary, as well as incredibly expensive technologies that at this stage are extremely difficult to imagine as available for purely commercial purposes.

But it looks like the situation may soon change, as evidenced by a detailed article by Bichlien Nguyen and Karin Strauss of Microsoft Research, who introduced a new method of writing data on synthetic DNA using a chip that is 1000 times faster than previous technologies, which allows for higher write throughput. data and therefore promises to reduce the costs associated with writing and reading content.

The team worked in partnership with the University of Washington and the Molecular Information Science Laboratory (MISL). The paper describing the new development is titled "Scaling DNA Storage with Nanoscale Electrode Wells" and is published in Science Advances.

Source: science