NATURE’S DATABANK

Drawing on the way nature has recorded and stored information for billions of years, scientists are using strands of DNA to develop a radically different way of storing seemingly limitless quantities of data. DNA can store an extraordinary amount of data--up to one exabyte, or 1 billion gigabytes, per cubic millimeter. Each strand of DNA is made of strings containing four different kinds of molecules known as nucleotides--adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine, abbreviated as A, T, C and G. Here, Choi discusses the challenge facing DNA data storage.