Low cost DNA data storage using photolithographic synthesis and advanced information reconstruction and error correction

Nat Commun. 2020 Oct 22;11(1):5345. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19148-3.

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Base Sequence
  • Chemistry Techniques, Synthetic / methods*
  • DNA / chemical synthesis*
  • DNA / chemistry
  • DNA / genetics
  • Gene Library
  • Information Storage and Retrieval / methods*
  • Light
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / methods
  • Photochemical Processes
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA

Substances

  • DNA