PNNL

Abstract

A data preservation problem looms large behind today's information superhighway. During the prehistoric age, humans preserved their knowledge by engraving bones and rocks. About two millenniums ago, people invented paper and started writing and publishing. In today?s electronic age, we use magnetic media and silicon chips to store our data. But bones and rocks erode, paper disintegrates, and electronic memory simply loses its contents into thin air. All these storage media require constant attention to maintain their information content. All of them can easily be destroyed intentionally or accidentally by people or natural disasters. With the large amount of information generated by our society every day, it is time to think of a new generation of data memory. In an effort to search for an inexpensive and lasting data memory, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have investigated the use of deoxyribonucleic acid ? commonly known as DNA ? as an information storage medium since 1998. The ambitious goal is to develop a data memory technology that has a life expectancy much longer than any of the existing ones. The creation of our initial DNA memory prototype consists of four major steps: encoding meaningful information as artificial DNA sequences, transforming the sequences to living organisms, allowing the organisms to grow and multiply, and eventually extracting the information back from the organisms. This article describes the objective of our investigation, followed by a brief description of our recent experiments and several potential applications being considered at PNNL.