Technology & Science

Storing Digital Data in DNA

By Darshan S•Oct 2, 2023

This blog mainly focuses on giving the basic idea on how DNA can be used to store digital data. Also the complications behind it.

What is DNA?

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA). Mitochondria are structures within cells that convert the energy from food into a form that cells can use.

Components that make up DNA

Series of smaller molecule called nucleotides, each nucleotide have three different building block:

  • Nitrogenous base
  • Deoxyribose
  • Phosphate

There are 4 different types of nucleotides, which helps in building the entire DNA molecule:

  • A - Adenine
  • T - Thymine
  • G - Guanine
  • C - Cytosine
Well some of you might be wondering that why we are focusing on biology of DNA, and why to learn about the types of nucleotides, well for all these questions you will get your answer in the following paragraphs.

We need to learn on how to synthesize DNA artificially, also to retrieve the stored data, we will see them in brief after we learn on how to convert our digital data into the 4 available nucleotides (A,T,G,C).

How to convert digital data and store in DNA?

There are more than 6 possible methods which can be used to convert the digital data into nucleotides, they are:

  • Binary-Base encoding
  • Huffman Coding
  • Hamming codes and error correction
  • Fountain Codes
  • DNA alphabet expansion

1. Binary-Base encoding:

Binary-to-base encoding is a process used in bioinformatics to convert digital data, typically represented as binary sequences (0s and 1s), into sequences of nucleotides (A, T, G, and C).

  • 00 maps to A
  • 01 maps to T
  • 10 maps to G
  • 11 maps to C

For example, let's say you want to encode the binary sequence "00101110". So, the binary sequence "00101110" would be encoded as the nucleotide sequence "A(00)G(10)C(11)G(10)."

Why use DNA?

  • Volume - It is estimated that 1 gram of DNA can hold up to ~215 petabytes of information.
  • Longevity - DNA can store data for hundreds of years.
  • Environmental Impact - environmentally friendly compared to electronic waste.

Interactive Demo: Binary to DNA