
DNA Data Storage: The Entirety of YouTube Could Fit on a Teaspoon - dpflan
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a29008852/dna-storage-future/
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roywiggins
The first write-only (to a first approximation) memory storage. Reading back
petabytes of DNA is going to be a challenge.

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lkirk
Indeed, one could only imagine the cost of sequencing the dna to retrieve the
data (not to mention the current lack of random access). Illumina's highest
capacity sequencer will do 6Tb (terabases). The machine costs about half a
million dollars and each run is tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention
the lab costs of preparing/storing the dna. Additionally, the depth at which
one would have to sequence to get _all_ of the data back reliably would be >1
meaning that every base would have to be sequence more than once (to avoid
sequencing errors).

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dpflan
"each run is tens of thousands of dollars"

I'm not familiar with sequencing economics, would you mind explaining the cost
of a "run"?

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lkirk
A sequencing run (at least in the context of Illumina's technology) requires a
few very expensive consumable reagents: First being the flowcell (microscope
slide that the dna sticks to while being read by a laser), the reagents
(containing enzymes with fluorophores and other reagents for amplifying and
manipulating DNA), and the actual power consumed by such machinery. This does
not factor in prep/lab costs (which can be kept at a minimum with automation,
but that also is a high startup cost endeavor). Each sequencing run can take
~1-3 days depending on the format.

Edit: this video may be able to explain a little better how this process
works:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCd6B5HRaZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCd6B5HRaZ8)

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dpflan
Thanks for the explanation. I’ve seen research on graphene-based nanopore
sequencing, but my knowledge and understanding are shallow.

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Barrin92
rather than just talking about the density of storage it would have been
interesting to get some figures on the read and write speed. I figure that
writing things to DNA and/or reading it is incredibly complicated and slow.
What's the use case for something like this, putting information into DNA and
then freezing it somewhere?

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waiquoo
I work for a commercial synthetic DNA producer in R&D. At the moment writing
DNA is the slow part. There has been an almost Moore's law like reduction in
price/increase in speed for sequencing, but so far synthesis has lagged. The
state-of-the-art is phosphoramidite synthesis which has been around since the
80's. We have optimized and streamlined the process, but a single base
addition (writing one 'bit') is still in the range of 100's of seconds. Also
the length of DNA produced by phosphoramidite synth is limited to a couple
hundred bases in most cases (although it's possible to extend that out to
hundreds of bases at increased cost/reduced efficiency). So long DNA has to be
stitched together from shorter strands. The other issue with synthetic DNA is
quality so methods like microarrays are not necessarily the best (quality
cannot be objectively measured on a per strand basis).

There are some interesting developments out there, like using enzymatic
methods to synthesize long strands, but a lot of that technology is still in
it's infancy.

I would be happy to discuss the field if anyone is working in it (or has
interest)

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danarlow
I’d like to discuss! Email in my profile

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waiquoo
Hi Dan, I've actually been meaning to reach out to you, your company is doing
some really exciting things. I don't see your email in your profile, so I will
send a quick email to your company info email. Otherwise feel free to send a
quick message to sbearden at idtdna dot com

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rhacker
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Next...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_\(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation\))

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mzkply
Reminds me of ST:Voyager's bio gel packs

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DannyB2
But ST:Voyager never had the DMCA.

Imagine the copyright strikes of storing (and replicating) all of YouTube in a
teaspoon.

