The invention of the printing press and movable type—metal letters that can be arranged and inked—led to the Renaissance and an explosion of information that continues to this day. Now, researchers report applying the concept of movable type at the molecular level to dramatically speed up the ability to encode data in strands of DNA, an incredibly high-density medium for storing information. Although only demonstrated in the lab so far, the new approach, reported today in Nature, could energize the emerging DNA data storage industry by making it cost effective to archive vital information for decades and beyond, independent researchers say.
“It’s a really nice proof of concept and a significant improvement over previous DNA data storage approaches,” says Kun Zhang, a genomics expert at Altos Labs. “It gets around a barrier of DNA data storage that requires synthesizing DNA from scratch,” adds Jeff Nivala, a biophysicist at the University of Washington.
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