Microsoft Purchases Ten Million Long Oligonucleotides From Twist Bioscience

Twist Bioscience Corporation, a company accelerating science and innovation through DNA synthesis, announced Microsoft Corp. has agreed to purchase ten million long oligonucleotides from Twist Bioscience to encode digital data.

“Today, the vast majority of digital data is stored on media that has a finite shelf life and periodically needs to be re-encoded. DNA is a promising storage media, as it has a known shelf life of several thousand years, offers a permanent storage format and can be read for continuously decreasing costs,” commented Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO, Twist Bioscience. “Our silicon-based DNA synthesis platform offers unmatched scale and product quality that vastly accelerates the ability to write DNA at a cost enabling storage.  We are thrilled to work with Microsoft, and University of Washington researchers, to address the growing challenge of digital storage.“

“As our digital data continues to expand exponentially, we need new methods for long-term, secure storage,” said Doug Carmean, a Microsoft partner architect within the company’s technology and research organization. “The initial test phase with Twist demonstrated that we could encode and recover 100% of the digital data from synthetic DNA. We’re still years away from a commercially- viable product, but our early tests with Twist demonstrate that in the future we’ll be able to substantially increase the density and durability of storage.“

Using DNA for Digital storage
The quantity of digital data is doubling approximately every two years yet the ability to store this data is not keeping pace. There is a drastic need for a storage medium that stores data. The convergence of affordable DNA sequencing and the scalability of Twist Bioscience’s silicon-based DNA synthesis technique presents an opportunity enabling the oldest life-form, DNA, to become a viable storage option. Using DNA as an archival technology avoids two key limitations of traditional digital storage media: limited lifespan and low data density. DNA storage could last up to 2,000 years without deterioration according to a presentation at the American Chemical Society. In addition, a single gram of DNA can store almost a one trillion GB (almost a zettabyte) of digital data.