The DNA cassette resembles music cassette tapes
Jiankai Li et al. 2025
Retro cassette tapes could also be making a comeback, with a DNA twist. Whereas DNA has been used as an data storage medium earlier than, researchers have now mixed this with the comfort and look of a Eighties cassette tape, creating what they’re calling a DNA cassette.
Xingyu Jiang on the Southern College of Science and Expertise in Guangdong, China, and his colleagues created the cassette by printing artificial DNA molecules on to a plastic tape. “We are able to design its sequence in order that the order of the DNA bases (A, T, C, G) represents digital data, similar to 0s and 1s in a pc,” he says. This implies it may possibly retailer any kind of digital file, whether or not textual content, picture, audio or video.
One downside with earlier DNA storage strategies is the issue in accessing knowledge, so the crew then overlaid a sequence of barcodes on the tape to help with retrieval. “This course of is like discovering a e-book within the library,” says Jiang. “We first want to search out the shelf similar to the e-book, then discover the e-book on the corresponding shelf.”
The tape can also be coated in what the researchers describe as “crystal armour” made from zeolitic imidazolate, which prevents the DNA bonds from breaking down. Meaning the cassette might retailer knowledge for hundreds of years with out deteriorating.
Whereas a standard cassette tape might boast round 12 songs on both sides, 100 metres of the brand new DNA cassette tape can maintain greater than 3 billion items of music, at 10 megabytes a track. The whole knowledge storage capability is 36 petabytes of information – equal to 36,000 terabyte arduous drives.
Nonetheless, says crew member Jiankai Li, additionally on the Southern College of Science and Expertise, for those who put one of many new tapes into an old style Walkman, it gained’t produce any significant sound, as a result of the DNA cassette doesn’t use the magnetic alerts of its predecessor.
“Our tape carries DNA molecules,” says Li. “In different phrases, it could be like making an attempt to play a photograph in a report participant — the codecs are incompatible.”
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