R&D: Compact Cassette Tape for DNA-based Data Storage

Science Advances has published an article written by Jiankai Li, Cuiping Mao, Shuchen Wang, Xingjian Li, Xueqing Luo, Dou Wang, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Smart Healthcare Engineering, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Biomaterials, Department of Biomedical Engineering. Southern University of Science and Technology, No. 1088 Xueyuan Rd., Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, P. R. China, Shuo Zheng, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, No. 1088, Xueyuan Rd., Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, P. R. China, Jialin Shao, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Smart Healthcare Engineering, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Biomaterials, Department of Biomedical Engineering. Southern University of Science and Technology, No. 1088 Xueyuan Rd., Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, P. R. China, Rui Wang, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, No. 1088, Xueyuan Rd., Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, P. R. China, Chunhai Fan, Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules and National Center for Translational Medicine, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 800, Dongchuan Rd., Minhang District, Shanghai 200240, P. R. China, and Xingyu Jiang, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Smart Healthcare Engineering, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Biomaterials, Department of Biomedical Engineering. Southern University of Science and Technology, No. 1088 Xueyuan Rd., Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, P. R. China.

Abstract: “DNA with high storage density can serve as an alternative storage medium to respond to the global explosion of data growth and become a powerful personal storage memory if an integrated compact device can store and handle large-scale data. Here, we incorporate a DNA cassette tape with 5.5 × 10⁵ addressable data partitions (addressing rate up to 1570 partitions per second), a DNA loading capacity of 28.6 mg per kilometer, and deposit-many-recover-many (DMRM) features per partition to flexibly manage large-scale storage data and achieve hundreds of years of data preservation. We develop a compact DNA cassette tape drive and verify its functionality by randomly depositing incomplete images into the data partition, demonstrating a completely automated closed-loop operation involving addressing, recovery, removal, subsequent file deposition, and file recovery again, all accomplished within 50 min. Last, the complete image is restored by next-generation sequencing and decoding. DNA cassette tape provides a strategy for fast, compact, large-scale DNA-based cold or warm data storage.“