The world is experiencing a shortage of free space for storing digital data. This problem has existed for several years, but ordinary people hardly ever think about it. Not so long ago, there was a time when free space for recording digital data was limited by the size of your computer's hard drive. When the limit was reached, we either went for a new hard drive or recorded everything on optical media. When they ended, we just deleted the old data and recorded new ones. But there are those who never delete data.
For example, many companies do not do this, especially those whose field of activity and value depends on the digital information they possess. Times change. Technology is advancing. Now the information is not deleted, it is transferred to the "cloud". By the way, the very term "cloud" is very ephemeral and does not reflect a real physical natural phenomenon at all. He just seemed very comfortable and beautiful, and they left him. Where is the data stored? It doesn't matter at all, at least as long as we can turn to them at any time. Is it likely that we will eventually run out of cloud storage space? Nobody thinks about it. As long as you pay for the subscription, everything is fine. Little space? You choose a new tariff plan and you get even more space for your information.
This messiness has made it difficult for people to even imagine that one day we might run out of free space to store digital data. As it used to be difficult to imagine that sooner or later fresh water may run out on Earth, the reserves of which are replenished due to its circulation in nature. But here's the reality. In 2018, water supplies in Cape Town, South Africa, were rapidly approaching full depletion. And we, people who do not think about it, are rapidly approaching a lack of free space for storing digital data.
Data, data, data around
The main reason for this depletion of free space is, of course, related to the rate at which we are producing new data. Every day around the world, thanks to 3.7 billion Internet users, about 2.5 quintillion bytes of information are generated. Of all the digital data available today, 90 percent has been created in just the past two years. And with an increase in the number of used smart devices that connect to the World Wide Web (the same "Internet of Things"), these numbers will grow even more in the near future.
“When people talk about cloud storage, they often mean there is some kind of infinite free storage space,” comments Hyun Jun Park, head and co-founder of Catalog, a data storage company, to Digital Trends.
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“However, the cloud is the same computer that stores your data. People simply do not realize that so much digital data is generated in the world that the pace at which it is produced is significantly ahead of our ability to store it all. In the very near future, we will see a huge gap between the amount of useful data and our ability to store it using traditional media."
Since cloud storage companies are constantly busy building new data centers or expanding existing ones, it is very difficult to predict when we will actually lose all free space. Nevertheless, according to the same Park, by 2025, mankind in aggregate can generate more than 160 zettabytes of digital information (zettabytes, for those who do not know, this is a trillion gigabytes). How much of this volume can we really save? About 12.5 percent, Park says.
This issue definitely needs to be addressed.
Is DNA the answer?
So say Park, Nathaniel Rocket, and their colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together they founded Catalog, within whose walls a technology was developed that, according to its creators, could change the way we think about how all our digital data will be stored in the near future. In their opinion, or rather a statement, soon digital data from all over the world can fit into an area no larger than a wardrobe.
Catalog offers DNA coding as a suitable solution. It all sounds like one of the stories of the American science fiction writer Michael Crichton, but the scalable and affordable solution they offer is quite realistic and even attracted $ 9 million in venture funding, as well as the support of leading professors from Stanford and Harvard universities.
“I am often asked the question: whose DNA are we using? It’s like people think that we are taking DNA from a person and turning them into mutants or something,”Park laughs.
But this is not at all what Catalog does. The DNA that Catalog uses to encode data is a synthetic polymer. It is not of biological origin and is not created on pairs of nitrogenous bases in which information is recorded. A series of zeros and ones that is written into the polymer also cannot be the code of anything alive. Nevertheless, the resulting product is biologically practically indistinguishable from what we are used to meeting in a living cell.
The idea that DNA can be viewed as an alternative medium for storing digital information dates back several decades. In fact, when James Watson and Francis Crick first came up with the DNA structure model in 1953. However, until now, a number of significant limitations did not allow seeing the huge potential of using DNA as a means of storing digital information, not to mention how to translate all this into reality.
In its usual view, the method of storing information through DNA is centered around the synthesis of new DNA molecules; matching sequences of bits of information to sequences of four pairs of DNA; and producing enough molecules to represent all the numbers you want to store. The problem with this method is that the process is expensive and slow. In addition, there are many restrictions associated with the actual storage of the data itself.
Catalog's approach suggests disconnecting the synthesis of molecules from their coding. Basically, the company first produces a huge amount of only certain molecules (which significantly reduces the cost of production), and then encodes information into them using a variety of ready-made molecules.
As an analogy, Catalog compares the previous approach to the production of custom hard drives with information already pre-recorded on it. Recording new information in this case implies the need to create a new hard disk from scratch. Catalog's new approach can be compared to mass production of blank hard drives and writing new encoded information to them as needed.
It's all about storage
The beauty of this is how huge the amount of data can be stored in a very compact space. As a demonstration, Catalog used its technology to encode various science fiction books into DNA. For example, the entire cycle of novels The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But these are all trifles before the opening possibilities.
“Comparing comparable numbers, the number of bits that you can store with DNA is a million times higher than what is offered by the same solid state drives. For example, let's take the size of a regular flash drive. Using the DNA method of storing information, you can write a million times more information to a device the size of this flash drive than to a regular flash drive."
Comparison with solid-state drives, the developers note, is still not entirely accurate. DNA allows you to store much more information in a comparable volume, but the technology does not allow you to provide instant access to it, as, for example, in the case of the same USB drives. Catalog technology transforms information into a solid physical pellet (granule) from a synthetic polymer.
To access this information, you need to take a coded synthetic polymer pellet, rehydrate it with water, and then “read” it using a DNA sequencer. As part of the process, it will be possible to isolate the base pairs of DNA, which can then be used to calculate the number of zeros and ones that form information. From start to finish, this process can take at least a few hours.
For this reason, this technology is primarily targeted at the archiving market, where fast access to information is not required. Usually, in this case, we mean data that is not used or very rarely used after recording, but at the same time is extremely important for saving. Let's say, like your refrigerator warranty, only on a corporate scale.
How will all this benefit ordinary users? At the beginning of the article, we talked about the fact that most of us do not think about what is happening and where our information is stored. On solid state media? Yes, even if only on magnetic tape. We are not interested in this as long as we have access to it at any time.
Due to the length of the information recovery process, we are unlikely to ever reach the level when some Google Cloud or Yandex. Disk stores our information in giant vats of DNA. If the same Catalog technology proves its effectiveness, then, most likely, it will find its niche in areas where the approach of long-term information storage is applied. As for the short-term storage method, where both hard drives and solid-state drives are currently used, we will have to rely on other methods.
Introducing perspectives
This test tube contains millions of copies of data encoded in DNA.
Nevertheless, here you can see almost sci-fi possibilities.
“Imagine that a granule implanted under your skin contains all the information about your health: your magnetic resonance angiography data, your blood type information, an X-ray for your dentist,” says Park.
“You probably want all this data to be always available to you, but you don’t want to store it somewhere in the“cloud”or on some unsecured hospital server. Having this data in the form of DNA with you at all times, you will be able to physically manage it, gain access, if necessary, restrict it to everyone else and open it directly to your attending physicians."
“Almost every modern hospital has a DNA sequencer. I am not saying that we are currently pursuing exactly this goal of using this technology, but in the future all this may become quite possible,”says the developer.
The Catalog is currently engaged in experimental projects aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of the technology they have developed.
“We are not facing any unsolvable scientific difficulties, we are now talking more about the tasks of optimizing mechanical processes,” said Park.
By his own admission, Park, he decided to get involved in researching ways to store data using DNA simply because he thought it was a very cool and innovative technological approach to solving the existing big problem. Now, according to the expert, this technology can become one of the most important technologies of our time.
Nikolay Khizhnyak