Electric energy can be retained in air or by heating carbon blocks. Data, meanwhile, can be stored in DNA.
Natural DNA strands consist of 4 components, named nucleotides, denoted by the letters A, G, T and C respectively.
When translated into the 1s and 0s of binary, the billions of potentially available combinations result in an extremely high storage density.
Now, using artificial DNA, a research team from Illinois has extended the molecule’s natural alphabet by 7 letters. This significantly increases storage capacity.
In order to ensure the information is correctly read out again, the team has developed an AI which exactly identifies the natural and artificial DNA components.
The future of data storage seems assured.
