Recently, the team of teachers and students of Southeast University successfully stored the school motto "Stop at the Best" into a DNA sequence, achieved a new breakthrough in DNA storage technology, and published the relevant results in the international academic journal "Science Progress".
Liu Hong's team improved the traditional chemical synthesis method, using electrochemical methods, "translated" the four words of the Motto "Stop at the Best" into a DNA sequence, stored it on the electrode, and then successfully read it.
"Our important breakthrough point is to achieve the integration of DNA synthesis and sequencing, after the integration, the efficiency and accuracy of DNA storage will be improved, and it is easier to achieve large-scale data storage."
In recent years, the field has ushered in a new research direction - DNA storage, which helps to solve the problem of data storage in the era of big data. ”
In 1994, Bill Gates sat on 330,000 pieces of paper, holding a disc in his hand, telling the world that a single cd could record more than 330,000 sheets of paper.
"In the next 5-15 years, Chinese scientists will hold a tube of DNA in the data center and tell the world: This is the current data of the world." A few days ago, Fan Chunhai, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, made such a prediction about the prospects of future DNA storage technology.
What is DNA storage technology? Why are it so highly anticipated?
New breakthroughs have been made in DNA storage technology
With the rapid development of information technology and digital technologies such as the Internet and artificial intelligence, the amount of information has grown exponentially, and traditional storage media such as disks, hard disks, and flash memory have gradually failed to meet the needs of data storage around the world.
In this context, DNA storage technology under the fusion of information technology and biotechnology has gradually entered our vision.
DNA storage electrode developed by a team of teachers and students of Southeast University. Photo courtesy of Liu Hong's team
"DNA is a sequenced biological macromolecule. DNA storage technology encodes biological DNA molecules to store information on DNA sequences. Professor Liu Hong of the State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics of Southeast University introduced.
Liu Hong's team improved the traditional chemical synthesis method, using electrochemical methods, "translated" the four words of the Motto "Stop at the Best" into a DNA sequence, stored it on the electrode, and then successfully read it. "Because I have a background in electrochemistry, electrodes are the tools we use most often, so I thought of using this as an entry point to study."
"Our important breakthrough point is to achieve the integration of DNA synthesis and sequencing, and most of the current SYNTHESIS and sequencing of DNA storage are separate, which is actually a relatively laboratory basic research." Liu Hong said, "After the integration is realized, the efficiency and accuracy of DNA storage will be improved, and it is easier to achieve large-scale data storage." ”
Talking about the original intention of the research, Liu Hong said: "The State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics of Southeast University has been engaged in the research of bioelectronics, and in recent years, the field has ushered in a new research direction - DNA storage, so we started this research a year ago. More importantly, this research helps solve the data storage problem in the era of big data. ”
According to international data firm IDC, the total amount of data and information in the world will grow from 30 ZB (Zettabyte) in 2018 to 163 ZB in 2025.
"Data is now being generated much faster than we can produce these storage media, so new media must be available to solve this problem." Liu Hong said.
The USE OF DNA as a storage medium, Liu Hong believes that it has natural advantages: first, high information density, according to Microsoft Research previously estimated, 1 cubic millimeter of DNA can store 1 EB (Exabyte, ten billion bytes) of data; the second is long storage time, strong stability, under the right conditions, can be stored for tens of thousands of years; third, storage energy consumption is very low.
From formal research to new breakthroughs, Liu Hong's team only took more than a year. "But a lot of basic research actually starts a long time ago." Liu Hong said. In 2013, Liu Hong returned to China after his postdoctoral work and has been doing research on electrochemical sensing, and it is precisely these 8 years of precipitation that have laid a solid foundation for the rapid breakthrough of DNA storage technology.
Professor Liu Hong (left) with students observes DNA storage electrodes. Photo courtesy of Liu Hong's team
"While we submitted the paper, we continued to refine the research and added a lot of new data, so although the paper was only a few pages, our calculation materials probably had dozens of pages." Recalling the paper submission link, Liu Hong said: "In fact, every link of scientific research cannot be ignored, from submission to revision of manuscripts, we spent almost three or four months. ”
Talking about why he chose to store the school motto into the DNA sequence, Liu Hong said bluntly: "Probably because the school motto is engraved in the DNA of every southeast university teacher and student. ”
What are the challenges of DNA storage technology?
In the context of the exponential growth of the total amount of data information in the world, DNA storage technology has begun to explore applications in different fields. Because of its storage superiority, DNA storage technology has also attracted the attention of many countries and regions.
The United States is the country with the most related planning layout, which covers a number of technical processes from data "writing" to "reading"; although the European Union has not clearly issued a document policy for the layout of DNA storage technology, it has also funded related research and development; Japan, Australia and other countries have further increased their attention in the field of synthetic biology; the mainland has also laid out related fields, and the mainland's "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly proposes to "accelerate the layout of cutting-edge technologies such as quantum computing, quantum communication, neural chips, and DNA storage".
Companies have also long been keenly aware of the broad prospects of this field. Microsoft corporation was one of the first companies to study DNA storage technology, and in 2016 Microsoft announced the purchase of 10 million pieces of DNA for research data storage. In 2019, Huawei announced the establishment of the Institute for Strategic Studies, saying that it will mainly develop cutting-edge technologies such as optical computing, DNA storage, and atomic manufacturing. At this year's Huawei Global Analyst Conference, Xu Wenwei, director of Huawei and president of the Institute of Strategic Studies, said that he would use DNA storage to break through the ultra-large storage space model and coding technology and break the capacity wall.
For the application scenarios of DNA storage technology, Liu Hong said that DNA storage is suitable for application in places with long-term information storage needs, mainly playing a storage function, and does not need to read information frequently.
Despite the great potential of DNA storage technology, there are still challenges in terms of its application.
It is understood that the current DNA storage technology is also subject to data coverage and rewriting, random reading and writing. "In particular, the cost and efficiency of DNA synthesis remains a major challenge limiting the development of DNA storage technology." Liu Hong said. Industry analysts estimate that it would cost $800,000 to store 200MB of data in DNA.
"But I believe that after the continuous development of technology, the cost will become lower and lower." Liu Hong said.
Although important progress has been made in research, Liu Hong believes that this is only a preliminary result. "In order to store more data, the next step is to do data storage based on large-scale electrode arrays. We're just taking the first step, and using DNA as a storage medium actually has a long way to go. Liu Hong said.
Source: Popular Science China