Summary: Researchers in China have developed an innovative cassette tape that uses synthetic DNA to store data, boasting a capacity of 36 petabytes—enough to hold over 3 billion songs. This DNA cassette combines the nostalgia of classic tape technology with cutting-edge molecular storage, offering unprecedented data density and long-term stability. While promising, the technology still requires advancements in sequencing speed and cost before becoming practical for everyday use.
A Revolutionary DNA-Powered Cassette Tape
A team led by Professor Xingyu Jiang at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Guangdong, China, has created a remarkable hybrid of old and new technology: a cassette tape that stores data using synthetic DNA. Unlike traditional cassettes that rely on magnetic tape, this innovative device encodes digital information onto strands of DNA embedded on a plastic tape.
How Does the DNA Cassette Work?
The DNA cassette uses the four biological bases—adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G)—to encode digital data. These DNA strands are arranged along a long plastic tape, which resembles a classic cassette from the outside but offers vastly superior storage capabilities. The tape contains thousands of addressable partitions, enabling the system to process up to 1,570 partitions every second.
To protect the DNA strands and ensure data longevity, they are coated with a zeolitic imidazolate “armour,” which helps prevent degradation and could preserve information for hundreds of years. The system also includes a specialized cassette “drive” that can randomly access, recover, delete, or manipulate files stored on the DNA. In tests, recovering an incomplete image took about 50 minutes, but the team anticipates that faster, next-generation sequencing tools will improve retrieval times.
Storage Capacity and Longevity
The DNA cassette boasts an impressive total capacity of 36 petabytes. To put this into perspective, a standard cassette tape typically holds about 12 music tracks per side, whereas this DNA tape can store over 3 billion songs, assuming each song is approximately 10 megabytes. The storage density is exceptionally high, with up to 28.6 milligrams of DNA per kilometer of tape, and built-in redundancy ensures data reliability over the long term.
Challenges and Future Prospects
While DNA offers an extraordinary theoretical storage density—up to 455 exabytes per gram—the technology still faces challenges such as high costs and slow data retrieval speeds. Nonetheless, this breakthrough demonstrates the potential of DNA as a future data storage medium, especially as global data demands continue to surge.
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