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Microsoft Boots Up the First 'DNA Drive' For Storing Data (technologyreview.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the it's-alive dept.

Since 2016, Microsoft has been working with the University of Washington to develop the first device to automatically encode digital information into DNA and back to bits again. "So far, DNA storage has been carried out by hand in the lab," reports MIT Technology Review. But now Microsoft and researchers at the University of Washington "say they created a machine that converts electronic bits to DNA and back without a person involved." From the report: The gadget, made from about $10,000 in parts, uses glass bottles of chemicals to build DNA strands, and a tiny sequencing machine from Oxford Nanopore to read them out again. According to a publication on March 21 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, the team was able to store and retrieve just a single word -- "hello" -- or five bytes of data. What's more, the process took 21 hours, mostly because of the slow chemical reactions involved in writing DNA. While the team considered that a success for their prototype, a commercially useful DNA storage system would have to store data millions of times faster.

57 comments

  1. Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I say, I store data in my pee pee. It's a b*tch to keep it from coming out in the bathroom. People say lots of things.

    1. Re: Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      People say lots of things but usually only to one person at a time. People are verrrry boring and not the least bit complicated or exciting.

    2. Re: Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Should have used MongoDB

    3. Re: Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In a large amount of time the federation will discover that a computer program has been stored in the DNA of many races

  2. The perfect archive storage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lasts for aeons

  3. Incredible Potential by rmdingler · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Microsoft has been working toward a photocopier-size device that would replace data centers by storing files, movies, and documents in DNA strands, which can pack in information at mind-boggling density.

    Sometimes, we are led to believe that advancements in technology do not stem from advancements in private industry, and that too large corporations are always working to the detriment of humankind.

    Not always, certainly, but occasionally, the needs of civilization and corporate well being collide.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re: Incredible Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The central part of the paper is the only important part. The rest is very interesting if you're an academic but wouldn't make any sense at all without the core peace. In fact, it's especially noteworthy that the rest of the paper could not stand on it's own at all without the full elaboration of the good part.

    2. Re: Incredible Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Peace?

    3. Re:Incredible Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One step closer to creating Cylons.
      its all happened before, it will happen again.

    4. Re:Incredible Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not always, certainly, but occasionally, the needs of civilization and corporate well being collide.

      Isn't it always in a company's best interest to make sure that civilization exists and has plenty of money to spend on the products and services that the company provides?
      Also, who are the employees of the company if not members of that same civilization? Isn't it also in their best interest that civilization be healthy and wealthy?

    5. Re:Incredible Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's in the best interest of the company for someone else to subsidize all those things. And for them to not contribute at all.

      Hence, they don't, typically.

    6. Re:Incredible Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you are lucky.

      How about actually working towards the betterment of our species as a goal?

      Nah, fuck that. Gimme the money.

  4. This could make possible a new type of virus by olsmeister · · Score: 2

    If you store the correct data, it could literally be a virus.

    1. Re: This could make possible a new type of virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How long did it take to figure it out Einstein? Some of us understood immediately

    2. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um, no. Viruses use RNA, not DNA.

    3. Re: This could make possible a new type of virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could speed up the process immensely by storing a smaller word like SOL instead of HELLO

    4. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      Um, no. Viruses use RNA, not DNA.

      Retroviruses use RNA. Most viruses use DNA.

      Since RNA is less stable, retroviruses have a higher mutation rate. Influenza is a retrovirus.

      Virus classification

    5. Re: This could make possible a new type of virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My but aren't you a toolbag.

    6. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Influenza is a retrovirus.

      If that was true everyone who has ever caught the flu has had their DNA changed. I think not.

    7. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by manu0601 · · Score: 1

      My understanding is that not all cells are affected. Influenza mostly strikes on your lungs or bowels. And affected cells die and are replaced.

    8. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by BoogieChile · · Score: 2

      influenza viruses are RNA viruses that make up four of the seven genera of the family Orthomyxoviridae

      Might need to update that thinking of yours, then

    9. Re: This could make possible a new type of virus by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Funny

      You could speed up the process immensely by storing a smaller word like SOL instead of HELLO

      Hang on. I see where you're going. You fiend!

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    10. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I hate being wrong. You'd think I'd be used to it by now with all the practice I get.

    11. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Wrong. There are 2 groups of viruses. Retroviruses which use RNA, and plain old viruses which use DNA.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    12. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Takahashi · · Score: 1

      A virus needs DNA (or RNA) and a protective shell that helps protect and deliver it's payload. Here there's no shell.

      Also, any commercial hardware and all research hardware i know of would encrypt the data before writing to prevent this from happening intentionally. No implemented encryption scheme is perfect but it would be far easier to just order your "virus" DNA with a credit card then it would be to hack a DNA hard drive that only makes DNA a 100-200 bases long.

    13. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'd need folding and transport proteins to allow a virus to be created (like you'd find in a living cell environment)
      Without ribosomes and proteins to support folding any virus DNA you printed would just be just like the other DNA; Chains of molecules passively storing information.

    14. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by wierd_w · · Score: 1

      You mean retroviruses do that. Normal viruses use dna.

    15. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      1. Create "Never going to give you up" virus, complete with protective package and replication genes.
      2. Sprinkle over Chinese restaurant buffet
      3. Sit back and watch the world burn.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    16. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Reality of viruses and cellular fights against them is way deeper and more vicious than realized. Go listen to the Radiolab episode on CRISPR.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    17. Re:This could make possible a new type of virus by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Kinda like the ending of Beetlejuice?

      As with ghosts, billions of entertainment dollars waiting to be picked up.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  5. DNA viruses do exist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Um, no. Viruses use RNA, not DNA.

    Uhm, no, smallpox, herpes, and chickenpox are all DNA viruses.

    1. Re: DNA viruses do exist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DNA virus with VIRUS... need double anti virus

    2. Re: DNA viruses do exist by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

      Then your computer becomes autistic.

      DNA or memes, it is inevitable.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  6. Your data could get eaten too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Another worrisome aspect is sanitizing your data: Bacteria have genes for "eating" DNA when other sources of energy aren't around.

    This means an errant E. coli could find its way in, eat most of the data and replicate, and now there's also host-machinery for your RNA-virus to infect.

  7. Watch "Demon Seed" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DNA / RNA large storage and self thinking... I think I prefer Terminator over Demon Seed.

    1. Re:Watch "Demon Seed" by zlives · · Score: 1

      it takes all kinds, in NY city

  8. human compatible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft is experimenting on human compatible DNA programming. Reading and rewriting. The last paragraph from TFA states it's a teaser for NIA funding. This is some scary shit.

  9. Why DNA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems that at a molecular scale, there would be multiple chemical storage medium formulations with similar benefits and less biologocal risks.

    1. Re:Why DNA? by Takahashi · · Score: 2

      This is an excellent question! In principle any (hetero)polymer would work.

      For context, in the short term we're targeting archival storage and not high speed storage (it'll probably never be low latency in the same way an SRAM is). The amazing thing about DNA is that it's not only long lived under reasonable storage conditions but also eternally relevant. Try reading a 30 year old 8" floppy today. The data may still be okay but you'll have trouble finding the hardware. Since DNA is so important to humans in other contexts (medicine), we can be fairly certain that DNA reading (sequencing) will be easy and available in 30 years, or 300, or 3000.

      DNA is also much easier to manipulate. Nature provides us with all the tools (enzymes) we need to copy and select specific sequences. Academia provides us with a better understanding of DNA than other polymers. And industry provides us with wonderful machines like high throughput DNA sequencers. Watson-Crick base paring also allows DNA to do computation, which in some cases can be done directly on the data encoding DNA.

      As for safety, you are right in that many microbes are quite good at finding and incorporating DNA but such an even would still be quite rare and there are many things to consider:
      1) DNA data payloads are stored as just DNA, typically frozen or dried. And DNA alone is not sufficient to be pathogenic.
      2) Generally when scientists store data in DNA right now it's encrypted first. This make it hard to pick out payload data that will encode for something specific.
      3) It's far easier for a malicious person to just get parts of genes synthesized from different vendors and stitch them together at home. That ship has already sailed.
      4) Currently the best way to synthesize the data payloads is in short sequences of DNA that aren't long enough to encode for anything but short peptides.
      5) Randomly coming across a working pathogenic DNA sequence is technically possible but practically impossible (much like it's possible that you'll spontaneously quantum tunnel to the center of the earth but that'll never actually happen). An average gene in e. coli is about 8000 bases long. Of that size alone there are 4^(8000) (a beyond astronomically large number) of DNA sequences and only a handful of those do anything at all. Of those most would be toxic to the microbe it self or be a useless metabolic load (proteins are expensive to make and useless genes get cut out or turned off VERY fast in a population---days in continuous culture).
      6) If desired, you can also trade off a little density to insert stop codons occasionally, limiting the size of anything translated to only a few amino acids.

  10. More Cowbell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I feel the need for more Quantum, AI, or, maybe, just maybe, more Bitcoin in this discussion.

    1. Re:More Cowbell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Machine learning AI of the future use artificial intelligence to self-heal recombinant biological infrastructure so that biological devops teams can sleep easy knowing their continuous integration and continuous delivery DNA data pipelines are fault tolerant, resilient, and ready for the blockchain future that quantum algorithms will bring to the table to enforce a paradigm shift.

      Or ... something like that.

    2. Re: More Cowbell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where do I buy this?

  11. Imagine a RAID array of... by Dunbal · · Score: 1

    So, how many base pairs per second are we talking here?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:Imagine a RAID array of... by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Redundant Array of Independent DNA ?

  12. Millions of times faster? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nonsense! Sounds ready to ship. Get it out by the next quarter boys.

    1. Re:Millions of times faster? by Takahashi · · Score: 1

      Actually I think that millions of times faster statement in the summary came from a misquote or misunderstanding. For archival storage(write once read VERY seldom). It should have been millions (or trillions really) more bytes. 20 hours to write an archive and 1 hour to read it isn't bad. I believe amazon glacier has a similar read latency.

  13. The HORRORS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Listen to the RIAAs and MPAAs of the world screaming in horror! An intellectual property carrier which (basically) REPLICATES ITSELF! Arghhh! End-Of-The-World!

  14. Wierd by wierd_w · · Score: 0

    If the device itself is reasonably inexpensive, this, plus CRISPR/CAS9 and some yeast would make drug enforcement completely impossible, and would make designer lifeforms a new garage hobby.

    This is very dangerous tech.

  15. Half done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So if it took 21 hours to encode "hello" in DNA, then what about the rest of it, namely "world"?

    Seriously, this is pretty cool, and I hate Microsoft. Many years after I got my B.S in computer science, I took a basic genetics course at a community college. The translation and transcription processes a cell uses to go from DNA base pairs to RNA to assembling amino acids into proteins uses encoding that very much resembles a cpu's instruction set opcodes.

  16. Yes Slashdot, so overrated by wierd_w · · Score: 1

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

    Because contrary to the science that has already been done (cited above), and that this hardware and a little extra labware would enable, making your own "Very VERY special micro brew" is totally impossible!

    YES, IMPOSSIBLE! /s

    Overrated my ass.

  17. Why? by KermodeBear · · Score: 1

    Why would we want to do this? What makes dna data storage worthwhile?

    --
    Love sees no species.
    1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Density of data.

      Imagine how much data it takes to create/replicate an entire human being perfectly. All that data fits in something so tiny it can't be seen with the naked eye. This will make terabyte M.2 flash drives look like the old room sized IBM hard drives used back when my dad was learning computers.

  18. Data Evolution by cmeans · · Score: 2

    So, after a few centuries, instead of degrading, the data itself will evolve. "hello" will become "hi".

    --
    Give a hand, not a hand-out.
  19. The zombie apocolypse by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 1

    Is going to come from this.
    Some error is going to happen, the coping will go out of control, teh tech that come to take a look will get infected and spread that all around.

    --
    http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
  20. I'm going to have to buy the White Album again. by The+Snazster · · Score: 1

    Wonder what I will play it on?

  21. Hello? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My first computer program at least said "Hello world!".