A cassette-style audio storage device that replaces magnetic tape with synthetic DNA could one day hold every song ever recorded. The idea comes from a team of Chinese researchers led by Xingyu Jiang, a professor of biomedical engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Guangdong.
The principle is close to conventional digital memory, with one key difference. Instead of zeros and ones, information is written using the four DNA bases, A, T, C, and G. The team programmed these bases to generate the sequences needed to encode files on a long plastic tape embedded with synthetic DNA. To protect the fragile molecular bonds, the tape is coated with a zeolitic imidazolate "armor" that slows degradation.
The stated capacity is 36 petabytes, enough for over three billion tracks if each takes up about 10 megabytes. Each kilometer of tape holds 28.6 milligrams of DNA, and multiple copies of the data are preserved to maintain integrity for hundreds of years. The system handles a large number of addressable partitions, with up to 1,570 processed per second.
The researchers also built a prototype drive for the cassette. It randomly stores incomplete images across the available partitions and can recover, remove, or perform other storage operations on the DNA within about 50 minutes. Restoring a complete image requires "next-generation" sequencing and decoding techniques.
For comparison, old cassettes stored about 12 tracks per side on polyester film coated with magnetic particles. DNA offers far higher density, estimated at around 455 exabytes per gram, which makes the approach attractive for a world with growing data demands.
The work was published in Science Advances in September 2025. The authors describe the system as a strategy for fast, compact, large-scale storage of cold or warm data. For now, however, it remains a laboratory prototype, and DNA storage is still far from industrial-scale use.
No comments yet. Be the first!