Nucleic acid memory

In this Commentary, we discussthe information retention, density and energetics of NAM specically related to DNA for non-biological and non-volatile memory applications, ranging from letters to libraries. The potential of NAM has oen been dismissed, as nucleic acids are believed by some to be fragile and therefore unreliable. This is not the case. For example, the room-temperature half-life of ancient DNA exceeds 100years1,2. Indeed, the complete genomes of an ~50,000-year-old Neanderthal3 recovered from Siberia and an ~700,000-year-old horse4 recovered from the Arctic permafrost (approximate average temperature 4 C) have been sequenced. Still, the long-term stability of DNA and its decay kinetics are poorly understood at a per-bit (that is, base) level. As an energy-barrier model shows (Methods), DNA hasa retention time far exceeding electronic memory, and it can store information reliably over time. Through rst-principle calculations, DNA has been validatedas a model material for future NAM products (Supplementary Information section8). Therefore, we call for increased cooperation between the biotechnology and semiconductor sectors to pair previously unfathomable technological advances such as those from the Human Genome Project with the scaling expertise of the semiconductor industry.