When the computer was built, it was patterned after the human brain and, basically, the workings of the central nervous system. A task is done when a tap on the keyboard or a click on the mouse sends signals to the processing unit, which in turn allows you to input, store and retrieve data.
Over the course of time, much improvement has been seen in the technology. Storage devices, for one, have improved so much, becoming more portable while maintaining bigger storage space.
In a new discovery, scientists have found that going back to the human DNA can lead to the creation of a "device" that can store massive, error-free digital information for thousands of years.
A team of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) explored the archiving potential of DNA and was able to download error-free data after the equivalent of 2,000 years.
"If you go back to medieval times in Europe, we had monks writing in books to transmit information for the future, and some of those books still exist," said Dr. Robert Grass, a lecturer at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich and the lead investigator of the study. "Now, we save information on hard drives, which wear out in a few decades."
With their discovery, the team hopes to develop a method of searching for data encoded in DNA strands that float on just a drop of liquid.
Grass explained that the language of DNA is similar to the binary coding system of computers. The equivalent of the zeros and ones in a hard drive are the DNA codes seen in the four chemical nucleotides A, C, T and G.
DNA is more durable and can store more information even in a smaller space. According to Grass, in a fraction of an ounce of DNA, theoretically, data as huge as 300,000 terabytes can be stored. In archaeology, DNA that date to as far back as hundreds of thousands of years can still be sequenced today.
To test the DNA's capacity to input, store and retrieve information, the researchers encoded 83 kilobytes of texts from the 1921 Swiss Federal Charter, along with a copy of The Method, a famous work by Archimedes, dating back to the 10th century. Then, the DNA was encapsulated in spheres of silica and, for one week, these were kept in a warm temperature of 60 to 70 degrees Celsius. This is similar to keeping them for 2,000 years at 10 degrees Celsius.
After a week, the researchers decoded the stored information and found it to be error-free.
The researchers are currently working on labeling information stored in the DNA strands to make them searchable and easier to retrieve.
While promising, the use of DNA as a long-lasting and error-free storage device for huge pieces of digital information is expensive and may least likely be within the reach of consumers any time soon.
