New DNA HDD can be ‘erased and overwritten repeatedly’ — University of Missouri researchers aiming for next-gen thumb-drive-sized storage

Source: Tom’s Hardware

We’ve written about DNA storage and its potential several times before. However, the University of Missouri (Mizzou) is developing a “DNA hard drive,” which “moves the field closer to a practical, rewritable system.” That’s good, as readers prefer practical solutions to pie‑in‑the‑sky projects, and rewritables are particularly attractive. Unfortunately, Mizzou’s blog post on its DNA hard drive advance is light on technical details and doesn’t share prototype photos, demo statistics, or availability timelines.

“DNA is incredible — it stores life’s blueprint in a tiny, stable package,” Li‑Qun ‘Andrew’ Gu, a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at Mizzou’s College of Engineering, says. “We wanted to see if we could store and rewrite information at the molecular level faster, simpler, and more efficiently than ever before.”

Gu’s team claims to have developed a method to store, erase, and overwrite DNA data repeatedly. This would make the Mizzou DNA HDD attractive and practical – with its “extraordinary storage density and longevity,” due to the nature of DNA.

Frameshift encoding and Nanopore sensing

Mizzou doesn’t divulge details of the writing methodology in its blog post, but the associated research paper explains that it uses frameshift encoding to write data. This technique is an emerging approach among several groups exploring rewritable DNA storage.

The blog briefly explains the reading method. The team has designed “a compact electronic device paired with a molecular‑scale detector called a nanopore sensor.” This read head senses subtle electrical changes as DNA passes through its field, and electronics/software convert the DNA’s A, C, G, and T sequences into binary.

The researchers assert that their project, which leverages expertise in physics, biology, data, and materials science, marks a “key milestone in making DNA a long‑term replacement for some of today’s energy‑hungry storage technologies.” While the long‑term goal is to shrink the DNA HDD to a USB thumb‑drive size, non‑miniaturized prototypes or demos have not yet been shown. It may be some time before DNA‑based thumb drives appear on retailers such as Amazon.