6 ms·

My first thought was, how long did it take to write and read this data? I don't expect exceptional speed, but I do wonder about throughput and seeking.

boomzilla 12y ago
FTA: While it took years for the original Human Genome Project to analyze a single human genome (some 3 billion DNA base pairs), modern lab equipment with microfluidic chips can do it in hours. OK, so assuming 1 hour for 3 billion bases, it's 1000 hours for 3 trillions bases (3 Terabits) or 1 million hours for ~3 petabits (or 400TBs of data). Yeah, that's a long time, roughly 100 years :)
- aethertap 12y ago
  It should be highly parallelizable though, so all hope is not lost.
- laxatives 12y ago
  I believe that also consumes the strands you're reading, so unless the source is copied many times, it is probably even slower than that.
  - andrewstuart2 12y ago
    Good thing cells have been copying DNA since life began.
    - schrodinger 12y ago
      Great, now my hard drive is going to get cancer!
      - andrewstuart2 12y ago
        At least you can remove/destroy the cells though. Aside from DNA storage & replication, there's no auxiliary purpose of the tissue. http://xkcd.com/1217/ http://xkcd.com/1217/
    - laxatives 12y ago
      I'm not a biologist, wouldn't those cells would prefer to copy their own DNA?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
epistasis 12y ago
Reading DNA is advancing fairly quickly. Illumina's HiSeq X Ten system produces 6Tbases per day. (Capex and opex/year are both in the 8 digit range.) Seeking can be performed through entirely different means, as DNA is content-addressable. You can put in a magnetic bead attached to a strand complementary to what you're seeking, and pull that out of the mix. This is still a physical process that can take quite a bit of time.
skosuri 12y ago
Read and write were a couple of days each. Would be faster now. That said, we did 650kB; the article is misleading as they are talking about copies of the same information.
- ikeboy 12y ago
  So in other words, this is not going to be usable for computers anytime soon.

boomzilla 12y ago

FTA: While it took years for the original Human Genome Project to analyze a single human genome (some 3 billion DNA base pairs), modern lab equipment with microfluidic chips can do it in hours. OK, so assuming 1 hour for 3 billion bases, it's 1000 hours for 3 trillions bases (3 Terabits) or 1 million hours for ~3 petabits (or 400TBs of data). Yeah, that's a long time, roughly 100 years :)

aethertap 12y ago
It should be highly parallelizable though, so all hope is not lost.
laxatives 12y ago
I believe that also consumes the strands you're reading, so unless the source is copied many times, it is probably even slower than that.
- andrewstuart2 12y ago
  Good thing cells have been copying DNA since life began.
  - schrodinger 12y ago
    Great, now my hard drive is going to get cancer!
    - andrewstuart2 12y ago
      At least you can remove/destroy the cells though. Aside from DNA storage & replication, there's no auxiliary purpose of the tissue. http://xkcd.com/1217/ http://xkcd.com/1217/
  - laxatives 12y ago
    I'm not a biologist, wouldn't those cells would prefer to copy their own DNA?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

epistasis 12y ago

Reading DNA is advancing fairly quickly. Illumina's HiSeq X Ten system produces 6Tbases per day. (Capex and opex/year are both in the 8 digit range.) Seeking can be performed through entirely different means, as DNA is content-addressable. You can put in a magnetic bead attached to a strand complementary to what you're seeking, and pull that out of the mix. This is still a physical process that can take quite a bit of time.

skosuri 12y ago

Read and write were a couple of days each. Would be faster now. That said, we did 650kB; the article is misleading as they are talking about copies of the same information.

ikeboy 12y ago
So in other words, this is not going to be usable for computers anytime soon.