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I'm not sure if you're kidding of not but... Our ability to write DNA is quite limited (single fragments of ~1000bp at most) and expensive. The largest complet
by new299 9y ago
I'm not sure if you're kidding of not but...
Our ability to write DNA is quite limited (single fragments of ~1000bp at most) and expensive. The largest completely synthetic fragments that have been made would be able to store a few Megabytes of information.
I think it's potentially kind of interesting as an archival format, but even then data retrieval is always likely to be somewhat problematic. And we're a long way off synthesis of large datasets being practical.
- ende 9y agoOligo size isn't all that important since you geneally synthesize pools. You're right that reading the data back is expensive (essentially a sequencing project), but for deep archives that you would only ever retrieve in a catastrophy, DNA has the potential to be an ideal medium.
- new299 9y agoIt makes it... less than ideal. And I don't believe we have good massively parallel synthesis approaches currently. Overall writing is problematic (reading also, but is getting cheaper/easier).
- dnautics 9y agoThe length is not an issue since you can sequence en masse, and assemble the results by searching for overlapping regions. However the expense of the reading and writing machine and the reagents, and the pain of sequencing are going to be prohibitive. There will almost assuredly always be better and faster, and cheaper direct ways of manipulating electrons than molecules.