In this day and age, we can access all of humanity's knowledge from small computers in our pockets. All this data must be stored somewhere, but huge servers take up a lot of physical space and require a lot of power. Harvard researchers have developed a new system for reading and writing information using organic molecules that could potentially remain stable and functional for millennia.
For obvious reasons, DNA is a storage tool in the natural world—it can store huge amounts of data in a tiny molecule and is extremely stable, lasting for thousands of years in the right conditions. More recently, scientists have explored this ability by writing data into DNA on the tip of pencils, in spray paint cans, and even hiding the data in living bacteria. But the use of DNA as an information carrier has its own obstacles; reading and writing it remains a rather complicated and slow process.
"We intend to use a strategy that does not borrow directly from biology," says Brian Cafferty, one of the authors of the new study. "Instead, we relied on methods common in organic and analytical chemistry and developed an approach that uses small, low molecular weight molecules to encode information."
Instead of DNA, the researchers used oligopeptides, small molecules made up of varying amounts of amino acids. The basis for the new information carrier is a microplate - a metal plate with 384 tiny cells. Various combinations of oligopeptides are placed in each cell to encode one byte of information.
The mechanism is built on a binary system: if a specific oligopeptide is present, it is read as 1, and if not, then as 0. This means that the code in each cell can represent one letter or one image pixel. The key to recognizing which oligopeptide is present in a cell is its mass, which can be obtained using a mass spectrometer.
In their experiments, the researchers were able to record, save and read 400Kb of information, including a transcript of a lecture, a photograph, and a picture. According to the team, the average write speed was eight bits per second, and the read speed was 20 bits per second, with 99,9% accuracy.
Scientists argue that the new system has several advantages. Oligopeptides can be stable for hundreds or thousands of years, making them an ideal choice for long-term archival data storage. They can also store more data in a smaller physical volume, potentially even more than in DNA. Thus, the entire contents of the New York Public Library can be stored in a teaspoon full of protein.
The system can work with a wide range of molecules and allows data to be written faster than its counterparts using DNA, although the researchers acknowledge that reading can be quite slow. In any case, the technology could be improved in the future with better techniques such as using inkjet printers to write data and better mass spectrometers to read them.
The study was published in a scientific journal. .
Source: 3dnews.ru