like the rate As humanity’s creation of data increases exponentially with the rise of AI, scientists have become interested in DNA as a way to store digital information. After all, DNA is nature’s way of storing data. It encodes genetic information and determines the model of every living being on earth.
And DNA is at least 1,000 times more compact than solid-state hard drives. To demonstrate how compact it is, the researchers have previously codified Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, 52 pages of Mozart music.and an episode of the Netflix show “Biohackers” in small amounts of DNA.
But these were research projects or media stunts. Storing DNA data is not yet common practice, but it could be getting closer. Now you can buy what could be the first commercially available book written in DNA. Today, Asimov Press released an anthology of essays on biotechnology and science fiction stories encoded in strands of DNA. For $60, you can get a physical copy of the book plus the nucleic acid version: a metal capsule filled with dried DNA.
To encode the book in DNA, Asimov Press worked with the Boston-based company Catalog, which created approximately 500,000 unique DNA molecules to encode the book’s 240 pages, representing 481,280 bytes of data.
Traditional DNA data storage works by converting the binary code of 0s and 1s in a digital file into As, C, G, and T, the building blocks of DNA. Custom DNA strands are chemically synthesized letter by letter to match the desired sequence.
Instead, Catalog uses a method called combinatorial assembly, which the company likens to Gutenberg’s printing press. Similar to how movable letters can be arranged to form words, Catalog created an alphabet of DNA pieces that can be assembled to represent bits. The company mass-produces those DNA fragments and then uses enzymes to encode information into them. David Turek, Catalog’s chief technology officer, said it cost a few thousand dollars to encode the book in DNA and make 1,000 copies.
“This is a case where you encode something in DNA once and you can make as many replicas as you want using the tools of molecular biology,” he says. “It’s pretty easy to do this in volume.”
In 2023, French company Biomemory began offering a $1,000 DNA storage card that allows customers to store about a kilobyte of data, equivalent to a short email, of their choice. At the time, CEO Erfane Arwani told WIRED that the offering was an experiment to gauge consumer interest in DNA data storage. “We wanted to demonstrate that our process is ready to be shown to the world,” he said.
However, the cards were expensive because DNA synthesis is still a fairly slow and expensive process. Catalog claims that its combinatorial approach is more efficient. Making identical copies of the same book also lowered the price.
After Catalog did the coding, the DNA molecules were dried to powder and shipped to France, where biostorage company Imagene packaged the molecules in stainless steel capsules with an inert internal atmosphere, meaning they do not There is no oxygen or moisture inside. In this state, the DNA inside can be preserved for thousands of years.