R&D: Low Cost DNA Storage Using Photolithographic Synthesis and Advanced Information Reconstruction and Error Correction

Nature Communications has published an article written by Philipp L. Antkowiak, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1-5, 8093, Zürich, Switzerland, Jory Lietard, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Althanstraße 14, A-1090, Vienna, Austria, Mohammad Zalbagi Darestani, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX, 77005, USA, Mark M. Somoza, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Althanstraße 14, A-1090, Vienna, Austria, Chair of Food Chemistry and Molecular Sensory Science, Technical University of Munich, Lise-Meitner-Straße 34, 85354, Freising, Germany, and Leibniz-Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich, Lise-Meitner-Straße 34, 85354, Freising, Germany, Wendelin J. Stark, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1-5, 8093, Zürich, Switzerland, Reinhard Heckel, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX, 77005, USA, and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Munich, Theresienstr. 90, 80333, Munich, Germany, and Robert N. Grass, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1-5, 8093, Zürich, Switzerland.

Abstract: “Due to its longevity and enormous information density, DNA is an attractive medium for archival storage. The current hamstring of DNA data storage systems—both in cost and speed—is synthesis. The key idea for breaking this bottleneck pursued in this work is to move beyond the low-error and expensive synthesis employed almost exclusively in today’s systems, towards cheaper, potentially faster, but high-error synthesis technologies. Here, we demonstrate a DNA storage system that relies on massively parallel light-directed synthesis, which is considerably cheaper than conventional solid-phase synthesis. However, this technology has a high sequence error rate when optimized for speed. We demonstrate that even in this high-error regime, reliable storage of information is possible, by developing a pipeline of algorithms for encoding and reconstruction of the information. In our experiments, we store a file containing sheet music of Mozart, and show perfect data recovery from low synthesis fidelity DNA.“