Data Storage in DNA

Abstract

Human-beings have always been fond of accessing more and more information in minimum possible time and space. Consequently New Generation Computers and High Speed Internet have gained popularity in the recent years. We have been witness to remarkable achievements like the transition from the bulky hard-drives to the flash drives which has made personal data storage efficiently manageable. But when it comes to handling big data, the data of a corporation or of the world as a whole, the present data storage technology comes nowhere near to be able to manage it efficiently. An urgent need for a proper medium for information archival and retrieval purposes arises. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is seen as a potential medium for such purposes, essentially because it is similar to the sequential code of 0's and 1's in a computer. This field (DNA Computing) has emerged to become a topic of interest for researchers since the past decade, with major breakthroughs in its course. Seeming to come straight out of science fiction, "a penny-sized device could store the entire information as the whole Internet". The analyzed data from the researches reveals that just four grams of DNA can store all the information that the world produces in a year. Here, this topic of 'Data Storage in DNA' is described starting from the very first research to the most recent one, their techniques, their advantages and their flaws, the need for DNA storage, and how it will ultimately become a paradigm shift in computing. 

Encoding Information in DNA: From Basic Structure to Nanoelectronics

“…As DNA has a long shelf life and the entire sequences never get damaged during denaturation, data can be stored at high density in it without any attenuation and the desired number of copies of this storage can be obtained by using the Polymerase Chain Reaction technique. (Siddhant Shrivastava & Rohan Badlani,2014) [43]. Yachie et al (2007) [53] presented a data storing and retrieving system on the basis of the sequential arrangement of DNA molecules in living cells and have become successful to store the message E=MC^2 1950!…”

“…According to Huffman the best storage and lossless compression occur for base three and this is why DNA seems to be inefficient for data storage as it is consisting of 4 bases. The difficulty of synthesizing long DNA sequence while simulating on the computer for a specific design and the high cost of computing can appear as major challenges for practical DNA storage (Siddhant Shrivastava & Rohan Badlani, 2014) [43]. The increasing quantity of redundant data produced by the new sequential technology appears as a great challenge for sequence storage and management.…”

Security and Privacy in Molecular Communication and Networking: Opportunities and Challenges

“…Another big advantage is in the density of information. By considering that one gram of DNA contains 1021 DNA bases that is equal to 108 tera-bytes of data [62], this corresponds to a very exceptional density of information. Moreover, it can be envisaged a massively parallel fashion, since there are many enzymes that are able to read and process DNA according to the nature's design, and the manipulation occurs at a molecular level.…”

Digital Data Storage on DNA

“…The demand for data storage devices is increasing day by day as more and more data is generated every day. Total information in digital format in the year 2012 was about 2.7 zettabytes [4]. Presently devices such as optical discs, portable hard drives, and flash drives are used to store data.…”