Summary: Researchers in China have developed a groundbreaking DNA-based cassette tape capable of storing an astonishing 36 petabytes of data—enough to hold over 3 billion songs. Combining synthetic DNA with traditional plastic tape, this innovative storage medium offers unprecedented density and longevity, though faster sequencing technology is needed before it becomes 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 reinvented the classic cassette tape by integrating synthetic DNA as the storage medium. Unlike traditional cassettes that use magnetic particles on polyester strips, this new device encodes digital files onto strands of synthetic DNA affixed to a long plastic tape.
How Much Data Can It Store?
The DNA cassette boasts a staggering total capacity of 36 petabytes. To put this into perspective, standard cassette tapes could hold about 12 music tracks per side, whereas this DNA-based tape can store over 3 billion songs, assuming each song file is approximately 10 megabytes. The DNA strands are coated with a zeolitic imidazolate “armour” to enhance stability and protect the data for potentially hundreds of years.
The Technology Behind the DNA Cassette
Each DNA strand uses the four biological bases—adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G)—to encode information. The tape contains thousands of addressable partitions, with up to 1,570 processed every second. It also incorporates built-in copy redundancy to ensure long-term reliability. The system includes a specialized cassette “drive” that can randomly access, recover, delete, or manipulate data stored on the DNA. In testing, recovering an incomplete image took about 50 minutes, but full restoration will require advanced “next-generation” sequencing tools.
Challenges and Future Prospects
DNA storage offers an incredibly high theoretical density—up to 455 exabytes per gram according to the study. However, challenges such as high costs and slow data retrieval speeds remain. Despite these hurdles, this innovative experiment showcases the potential of DNA-based storage technology to meet the growing global demand for data storage in the future.
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