Purchasing a brand new hard drive to stash away all of your precious memories is one thing, but to make sure that those memories will be able to last is another. From time to time, it would be best to make a backup of your backup – just in case Murphy’s Law hits. Well, flash memory seems to have pervaded many different kinds of technology these days, and we have seen progress made to 32GB keychains, but perhaps a new kind of storage medium that can hold your precious data for a whole lot longer might debut in due time with the proper research made – DNA.
A team of scientists did present at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, laying claim to their success in making use of genetic material to store information safely, and that information will have a shelf life of at least 2,000 years, now how about that? DNA happens to be the data storage molecule of biology, where the human genome itself is said to carry approximately 750MB of raw information into a cell nucleus that measures a few micrometers across.
DNA does have its drawbacks, and copying errors are a major pain in the rear end, as one can testify to the growing number of cancer rates. Hence, the scientists will need to discover a method that can overcome DNA’s inherent fidelity problems. Speed, or rather, the lack of it, is another problem to overcome as the data retrieval process concerning DNA is extremely tedious. Well, it looks like DNA is not going to be an immediate storage solution option anytime soon, but perhaps advancements in the field might change that as it addresses the many crucial issues affecting it.
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