How is information stored in dna

The prospect of DNA data storage is not merely theoretical. And researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research have developed a fully automated system for writing, storing and reading data encoded in DNA. Meanwhile DNA is already being used to manage data in a different way, by researchers who grapple with making sense of tremendous volumes of data.

Recent advancements in next-generation sequencing techniques allow for billions of DNA sequences to be read easily and simultaneously. DNA bar coding is now being used to dramatically accelerate the pace of research in fields such as chemical engineering, materials science and nanotechnology.

Among the challenges to making DNA data storage commonplace are the costs and speed of reading and writing DNA, which need to drop even further if the approach is to compete with electronic storage. Even if DNA does not become a ubiquitous storage material, it will almost certainly be used for generating information at entirely new scales and preserving certain types of data over the long term.

He holds more than patents. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. The DNA molecules are then synthesized, and stored. To access the data, the DNA molecules would be sequenced, and the DNA sequences translated using the same algorithm, reproducing the video.

DNA is a polymer — a substance consisting of a high number of similar building blocks that are linked together — and other polymers can be used to store information, too. For example, plastic polymers are being explored for information-storage applications; one group synthesized a plastic polymer that, when read out, reproduced a quote by Jane Austen. By expanding experimental development efforts into i increasing the rates at which DNA can be synthesized and sequenced and ii detecting and correcting for errors in DNA synthesis, and by pursuing fundamental research into data storage across a variety of polymers, it is possible the U.

Learn more about our work in national security, science, tech, and innovation policy. Skip to content To reduce the burden on traditional data centers, improving on DNA data storage could be the key The pace at which data — such as photos, videos, and social media posts — are being generated is ramping up drastically, exceeding the scaling limits of traditional silicon-based data storage technologies, and DNA could be deployed to help meet this challenge.

Both copying and reading the information stored in DNA relies on base pairing between two nucleic acid polymer strands. Recall that DNA structure is a double helix see Figure 4. The sugar deoxyribose with the phosphate group forms the scaffold or backbone of the molecule highlighted in yellow in Figure 4.

Bases point inward. Complementary bases form hydrogen bonds with each other within the double helix. See how the bigger bases purines pair with the smaller ones pyrimidines.

This keeps the width of the double helix constant. More specifically, A pairs with T and C pairs with G. As we discuss the function of DNA in subsequent sections, keep in mind that there is a chemical reason for specific pairing of bases.

Insulin is responsible for regulating blood sugar levels. The insulin gene contains instructions for assembling the protein insulin from individual amino acids. Changing the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA molecule can change the amino acids in the final protein, leading to protein malfunction. If insulin does not function correctly, it might be unable to bind to another protein insulin receptor.

On the organismal level of organization, this molecular event change of DNA sequence can lead to a disease state—in this case, diabetes.

The order of nucleotides in a gene in DNA is the key to how information is stored. For example, consider these two words: stable and tables. Both words are built from the same letters subunits , but the different order of these subunits results in very different meanings.

In DNA, the information is stored in units of 3 letters. Use the following key to decode the encrypted message. This should help you to see how information can be stored in the linear order of nucleotides in DNA.

When comparing prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells, prokaryotes are much simpler than eukaryotes in many of their features Figure 5. Most prokaryotes contain a single, circular chromosome that is found in an area of the cytoplasm called the nucleoid. Figure 5. A eukaryote contains a well-defined nucleus, whereas in prokaryotes, the chromosome lies in the cytoplasm in an area called the nucleoid. In prokaryotic cells, both processes occur together.

What advantages might there be to separating the processes? The size of the genome in one of the most well-studied prokaryotes, E. So how does this fit inside a small bacterial cell? The DNA is twisted by what is known as supercoiling. Supercoiling means that DNA is either under-wound less than one turn of the helix per 10 base pairs or over-wound more than 1 turn per 10 base pairs from its normal relaxed state.

Some proteins are known to be involved in the supercoiling; other proteins and enzymes such as DNA gyrase help in maintaining the supercoiled structure. Eukaryotes, whose chromosomes each consist of a linear DNA molecule, employ a different type of packing strategy to fit their DNA inside the nucleus Figure 6. At the most basic level, DNA is wrapped around proteins known as histones to form structures called nucleosomes.

The histones are evolutionarily conserved proteins that are rich in basic amino acids and form an octamer. The DNA which is negatively charged because of the phosphate groups is wrapped tightly around the histone core. This nucleosome is linked to the next one with the help of a linker DNA. This is further compacted into a 30 nm fiber, which is the diameter of the structure.