DNA Fountain enables a robust and efficient storage architecture

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 355; no. 6328; pp. 950 - 954
• Main Authors: Erlich, Yaniv, Zielinski, Dina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 03.03.2017; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Algorithms; Architecture; Base Sequence; Computer architecture; Computers; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; DNA - chemistry; Gene sequencing; Genetic testing; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Information retrieval; Information storage; Information Storage and Retrieval - methods; Libraries, Digital; Methodology; Microbiology; Nucleotides; Oligonucleotides; Oligonucleotides - chemistry; Polymerase chain reaction; Retrieval; Robustness; Sequence; Stores
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.aaj2038

DNA is an attractive medium to store digital information. Here we report a storage strategy, called DNA Fountain, that is highly robust and approaches the information capacity per nucleotide. Using our approach, we stored a full computer operating system, movie, and other files with a total of 2.14 × 10⁶ bytes in DNA oligonucleotides and perfectly retrieved the information from a sequencing coverage equivalent to a single tile of Illumina sequencing. We also tested a process that can allow 2.18 × 1015 retrievals using the original DNA sample and were able to perfectly decode the data. Finally, we explored the limit of our architecture in terms of bytes per molecule and obtained a perfect retrieval from a density of 215 petabytes per gram of DNA, orders of magnitude higher than previous reports.