DNA is nature’s unique storage system. The molecule is made up of the chemical bases adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—shortened to A, C, G, and T—which pair off to type a double helix. The order of those bases determines the genetic blueprint of each residing organism.

To retailer information in DNA, a file is transformed from its binary code of 0s and 1s right into a sequence of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts. On Biomemory’s web site, a consumer can sort the textual content message they wish to retailer into an interface that appears one thing like Google Translate, which converts it into DNA code. Then, Biomemory custom-builds a DNA strand from that code, chemically synthesizing it base by base to match the specified sequence. Erwani says the corporate’s present course of takes about eight hours to make one kilobyte’s value of knowledge.

The DNA is synthesized in an answer, so the subsequent step is drying it to extend its shelf life. Taking inspiration from bank cards embedded with a microchip, which have been first deployed in France within the Nineteen Eighties, scientists at Biomemory designed a silver credit-card-like gadget with a round chip that holds the dried DNA. To protect the DNA, the cardboard is sealed to forestall any oxygen from coming into.

Arwani says clients will obtain two similar playing cards—one to maintain and one other to check out the method of retrieving the info. To retrieve their message, clients will mail in one of many playing cards, which shall be opened, and the dried DNA shall be rehydrated and read by a sequencing machine. The sequence—made up of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts—is then emailed to the shopper, who can plug that into Biomemory’s web site to translate it again into the textual content message.

Arwani sees potential for DNA as a long-term storage choice for individuals who need a secure, safe strategy to hold information of sentimental worth. Nicholas Guise, chief scientist on the Cybersecurity, Information Protection & Hardware Evaluation Research (CIPHER) Lab at Georgia Tech Research Institute, says he may see clients utilizing the playing cards to retailer data that wouldn’t change over a protracted time frame, corresponding to crucial passwords, the situation of a security deposit key, a beloved household recipe, or a message to a toddler or grandchild.

“It has to be something you care a lot about having forever but you’re not retrieving it often,” Guise says. “At a kilobyte you can’t do much, but at a slightly higher scale, you can start storing family photos and home videos.”