Long-term work
In a statement released by Microsoft on March 21, 2019, the US giant presented a prototype machine capable of converting digital information into a DNA sequence. Developed with the help of researchers from the University of Washington and detailed in Scientific Reports, this machine is the first of its kind!
The researchers have obviously done a huge job in developing this device, which is "finally" a DNA sequencer equipped with decoding software to translate the same DNA into bits. However, it seems that the first phase of testing was very time-consuming. It should be known that the word "hello" translated into binary language gives "01001000 01000101 01001100 01001100 01001111". While this word weighs only 5 bytes, it took 21 hours for the machine to give 1 mg of DNA! On the other hand, the researchers claimed to have found a way to divide this time in half, that is to say between 10 and 12 hours.
What is the point of such a project?
"Our ultimate goal is to bring into production a system that, for the end user, is very similar to any other cloud storage service: bits are sent to a data center and stored locally, and then appear when the customer wishes . "
Thus, the information is stored in synthetic DNA molecules created in a laboratory. Obviously, it's not about human DNA. This same information can be encrypted in this way before being sent to the system. Thus, this process could allow the development of data centers of the future! By 2018, Microsoft had already been noticed by diving a data center in the Atlantic Ocean.
Here is the video presentation of the project:
