Ok as a computer guy I have to chime in. First of all I loved this and it is fascinating and its so cool. But the actual amount of magnetic material in a hard drive is VERY small, something like 0.6 micrograms. Most of the weight is in creating the systems to quickly access that data. The same thing might have to happen for DNA, that the density of data has to decrease to increase access speeds. So we might end up having so sacrifice data density for data accessibility like we did for magnetic storage. I say that knowing absolutely nothing about the mechanics of DNA storage as they relate to magnetic storage....just some late night viewing thoughts that I thought were interesting to bring up...that per unit mass, I imagine magnetic and DNA are actually very similar, but the total mass of the hard drive unit is significantly larger because of the system used to access it quickly. To be fair you might need to include the weight of the DNA decoder-thingamagic that will have to accompany it.
Ohhhh, interesting. I didn't realize so much of the weight was "access stuff." I think my counter-question (as a DNA person who knows little about harddrives) is that storage wise, you still need to put the whole harddrive on a shelf somewhere, right? You can't just store the magnetic bits (super technical term)? Whereas for DNA the storage mass is completely separate from the decoding/sequencing, so you just have one sequencer for every room full of freezers stacked high with DNA. So that's where the space saving would come into effect. Or is it possible to store the magnetic bits separate from the "access bits" of the harddrive?
Ya, DNA built in form factor is awesome for jobs we haven't ever considered doing. Like we could do regular data dumps of the internet or something...which is just a silly thing to consider now a days. It might never do the job of a hard drive but open up ways of thinking about big data we just couldn't before!
There are removable hard drives (like the SyQuest drives from the 90s) which separate the storage medium from the rest of the disk drive, but a big problem is that today's data densities require extremely small distances and tolerances between the drive heads and the disks, making removable disks impractical. The closest commercial technology we have today are tape(!) backup drives, which are still used for archival storage and backups, even at datacenter scales. One academic paper on DNA storage (homes.cs.washington.edu/~luisceze/publications/dnastorage-asplos16.pdf) says that current tape density is 10 GB/mm³, with some experimental technologies reaching 100 GB/mm³. But DNA could theoretically hold 1 EB/mm³, which as they point out, is eight orders of magnitude more dense than tape. And while hard disks and tapes have storage lifespans of 3-30 years, DNA can retain data for centuries.
smidgeION is a sequencer that plugs into the iPhone’s lightning port. The hardware can get pretty small, significantly smaller than a hard drive, they are approaching thumb drive sizes. I question something else, read write speeds. Flash drives can easily read at hundreds of MB/s while DNA would be much slower. Write speeds would be even worse. I personally see this replacing magnetic tape that is typically used to backup. For standard IO, not quite.
This has got to be one of the most well presented genetics videos that I have ever seen! I just finished my masters in cancer research and now I'm working as a research tech, and I always try to find interesting way to share with people some of what I do, but honestly this was a really really well made video! I loved it! Also, I am new to your channel, can't wait to catch up on all of your other videos!! :) have a good day!
I wonder how fast we can make the read speed of the DNA will be in the future. It doesn't need to be that fast, it would just need to be as fast as tape to be used as long-term cold storage. It would be really cool to have data backup in more formats (and locations) than just HDD and tapes.
its so cool with this technology, like recently scientists from the Church lab at MIT has encoded a movie to DNA of a population of bacteria, and then they were able to recover almost 100% of it back. I was very surprised as the logic behind this technology is so simple (relatively speaking), but yet very powerful. CRISPR/Cas9 technology has certainly opened way for much more sophisticated genetics than ever before.
Alex Dainis Thank you for the kind words.It definitely has been a journey over the past few months, but it has been a fun one. Hope you have a pleasant week. -Cheers
DNA is just awesome and this is so interesting! Thank you so much for doing these videos. Maybe in the future people will just have their own Illumina sequencers at home. A private cheap and good sequencer would come very handy at the moment =P
Hi! I just stumbled upon your channel this mourning, and I found it very helpful, as I am an incoming chemistry Ph.D. student. Would it be possible for you to do a video of 'what you wished you knew when you first entered grad school?' Thank you for your channel!
Sounds like it will be an excellent offline storage and/or archive medium. As a near line or online storage medium we'd need a way to synthesize and sequence the DNA in nanoseconds. Which I think might be a much bigger deal than the actual data storage aspect. Also, I really like this format, keep 'em coming!
Thanks, I like this format too! They take a lot longer to make, but I'm way prouder of them! And the sequencer I talked about in my DNA in Space video is *almost* real time sequencing, but you still need to prep the DNA, process the files from the sequencer, etc. I think it could get to a point some day where it's an "Oh, I want to look at this file in an hour, I'll "download" it from my DNA now," but I don't think we're going to be at true real time searching as if it's a harddrive anytime soon. Definitely more of an archival storage method. BUT DNA technology advances surprise me all the time, so who knows...
I ran some numbers. That 2Tb HDD you use as an example is capable of reading data at about 125MBytes/s (average for 5.25" 7200RPM drives). That is about 1000Mbit/s or 2 bits per millisecond. 2 bits would equate to a single DNA base pair. If we could sequence DNA that fast then we'd be able sequence 2,000 pairs per second. No idea how that compares to the rate at which we can sequence DNA today. It is very interesting to me that this is an area where your skills as a biologist can be used in conjunction with my skills as a IT systems administrator/engineer. Two fields that seem to be completely unrelated and yet are seemingly moving towards a weird convergence.
awesome vid, reminds me of the holographic storage that I'd saw on the tv show "beyond2000" back in the 90s with richard hatch (precursor to cnet) which kind of turned into what dual layer blurays turned into, though we still don't have a acrylic cube like device that you put on a light table to read/write, like in the segment. This is much cooler, but BEWARE , have we learned nothing from the outcome of the construction of the infosphere! (its a futurama ref btw ;) )
HI Alex i am inspired from your experienced researched work on DNA that's was good and i firstly watch your video i just have one question that how you manage your things into the practical life? THANK YOU!
Excellent job... and I think even worthy as a segment on the Discovery Channel or the like AS IS... keep it up, just don't forget to finish your degree! ;)
Thank you! That's a huge compliment and I really appreciate it! And yes, eye on the prize, gotta get that PhD. After that there will hopefully be much more frequent videos of this quality :)
That's so cool! I had no idea scientists had actually managed to store info in DNA. I knew about the concept from my biology-book, but I think it was printed in 2014 so it's a bit outdated.
I wonder if bitrot would be a thing with DNA. Bitrot is a problem with Harddrives when a bit is randomly flipped and therefore corrupts the file. This can be managed today by using more modern file systems (like ZFS). Is it possible for a DNA sequense to be damaged between the time you write the data and the time you retrieve it.
Good question! So one of the things Dina (and the paper) talk about is the importance of redundancy to prevent issues like this. Each segment of data is encoded multiple times so that there's plenty of backup in case something happens between write and read time (or if the sequencer gets a base or two wrong, as they're not perfect!)
I didn't get exactly what is the relevance of making copies of copies of the DNA. If you sequence your DNA sample and then make a new DNA sample from the bits you recovered, and the bits are a 100% match to the original data, doesn't this new DNA sample have the same "error rate" as the first DNA sample ever created?
i didn't get the reusing part.. 1) the 'machine' will get the DNA sample with the files 2) Copie the sample, and Add to the original pool, so it can used again later 3) Read the Files in the sample is that it?
+Ricard Sorry this was unclear! The main point is that you have a finite amount of DNA with your data stored in it, and you don't want to use it all up by reading it. But the scientists used PCR to make exponential (and if you kept going, near infinite) copies of it, so you can just read the data from all of those copies so that you don't have to use up all of your original DNA.
That is so cool, I've not thought of using DNA in that way :)But to be honest, not sure how practical it really is. Sequencing now takes like 1 day for a usual plasmid insert...if the speed of seq. would greatly increase, we would need like huge seqencing centers to manage all those datas from all the people wanting access to their data, right?Anyway would be really cool to have an eppi with DNA as your future USB stick or so in a few hundred years :D
I like this idea. I know nothing about biology, physiology, genes, DNA and that sort of thing but I was actually thinking about finding some books and reading about them. Interesting video!
+ZorroVulpes Used a different lens! I have felt like things have been a little fuzzy on my normal lens lately so switched to a 35mm. Definitely nicer. And thanks!!
If the data is encoded in 200 bit units, how is the data reorganized into the whole? Are they stitched together as a single chain of DNA or only reassembled digitally? The way the process was described it seemed like the data was stored on many different 100bp strands, but I might have misunderstood.
It is indeed stored on many 200bp strands, as the illumina platform sequences DNA in 200bp pieces. The DNA Fountain algorithm stitches them back together digitally. I would be doing an injustice to the work if I mis-explained the stitching process here, but simply yes, the binary file is broken into small pieces, each piece becomes a 200bp physical fragment of DNA, each 200bp piece is sequenced, and then they are digitally stitched back into the full file.
Star Trek TNG: "The Drumhead" Airdate 29 Apr, 1991 WORF: (hands over a hypospray) This is J'Dan's. A hypospray he uses to treat his Ba'ltmasor Syndrome. But this has been fitted with an optical reader specially modified to read data from Starfleet isolinear chips. He can extract digital information from a computer, encode it in the form of amino acid sequences, and transfer those sequences into a fluid in the syringe. Then he injects someone, perhaps even without their knowledge. SATIE: Or perhaps with their knowledge. WORF: The information would be carried in their bloodstream in the form of inert proteins.
DNA will probably first be a replacement for magnetic tape data backup systems for companies like Google. Yes we still use tape. It's cheap and has lots of space.
Yes! I got a ring light at Christmas, which is compact enough to fit in my lab but also bright enough to make things look better. I also used a nicer 35mm lens on this video (which I've had for... 6 years but never think to use) which I think helped a lot.
Hey alex, absolutely love the concept behind using DNA as storage, but do you actually think it's real life applicable with the normal day to day consumer?
Funny enough, the cloud backup company I use for my home computer "promoted" DNA data storage as their April Fool's Joke this year. I think that's where it might become a consumer product: long term, off site storage that you only rarely access.
Like some guys around here, I'm also a "computer guy" but in the "crazy science" side of things, the real problem with Quantum processors and DNA storage is how the interact, in the form of "access type", "access time", latency in some other words BUT we're living with PWS (poorly written software), if we plan to use DNA as storage, well let me tell you, this remind me the old "string recorders" who give birth to phonographs and magnetic tape later on, those devices were used as "MEMORY" in mainframes using ISAM because there's more storage devices than Hard Drive. WELL TOO MUCH TALKING if you want DNA as storage, that's doable but we must change our mentality. The most amazing computer or processor, is in our head, less faster than a silicon one and even less faster than a quantum but... they can self-replicate, socialize, mobilize and... they construct other computers from different materials. DNA and molecular biology is very interesting, we just need better sensors and new paradigms.
Well... if i don't store it in my own genome, there's plenty of other candidates in my body's microbiome. I could store my data in my gut bacteria, and everytime i poop i'm emptying my recycle bin. I think this concept was touched on briefly in Iain Banks' book "Excession".
That is a fascinating concept... Despite the *obvious big issues* with editing your DNA to store data there, I think it's kind of a cool "brain candy" idea to try and figure out how you'd do it and where you'd put it and what the consequences would be, etc. But putting it in bacteria makes it a lot more interesting...
Alex Dainis Thats super cool. Do let us know when its accepted so we can look it up at pubmed. Do you use researchgate? It would be cool to follow you there.
I love your videos they are soo great to see because for me It's very interesting to talk to scientists Could you put the information in organisms like bacteria or mammals and then sent them over the ocean? Can you store it everywhere out of a freezer, too? We can also use asteroids that are passing by the earth to send information into an another solar system like you and Dina said like the Voyager Golden Record plate You inspire me to be creative and think about it :) Thanks! I'm excited about your next video Gabriel
Please make a new video soon! You have no idea how much I love your videos😦🙈 I'm even considering coming to Grad school there just to be in the same lab as you hahaha I swear you're like a female version of me❤
Hey you're Greek! I never realized it until my wife saw your name in my sub list and asked me "who's the Greek girl?" We're both Greek and I've been following your for several years. But I never realized you are Greek.
Ты знаеш почему я плачу? Закрыли канал моего брата на You Tube! Забрали цэлый год нашей жизни! Это как уничтожить альбом с детскими фотографиями. За что? Как так можно? Мы не нарушали правила сообщества, а снимали веселое видео для нашей семьи, для друзей. Мы так старались, веселились, волновались, дружили. Мы учились снимать видео, слушая ваши советы. Но у нас это отобрали!!!. Мы живем в стране, где часто нарушают права человека, но от любимого You Tube мы такого не ожидали. У нас нет богатых и влиятельных покровителе. Нас просто так можно забрать часть нашей жизни (ведь мы потратили на эти видео много сил и времени) , растоптать наши надежды??? Вы такие красивые, сильные, смелые!! Быть может вы заступитесь за двоих деток, которые так любят снимать видео? Хотя у вас и так много забот, извините, что потревожили вас, с любовью Саша и Даник.
This reminds me of back in the 90s, when researchers found a way to store enormous amounts of data on a roll of scotch tape. Nowadays, we all have Scotch drives in our computers, don't we? Oh, wait, but they're being replaced by holographic crystal drives, which are written and read with a laser, and store even more data on a cube crystal of 1cm length. So then, in 10-20 years, we might just have DNA drives in our computers, just like that ;-) No, seriously: Isn't DNA packaged into chromosomes? And aren't those packaged into cells? Also, doesn't the sequencer destroy the DNA while "reading" it? This would be a WORN type of memory then, which stands for "Write Once Read Never". Sorry for my typical German pessimism, but even after watching this video, which explained it all very well, I can't believe this is going to happen anytime soon, just yet. But maybe, when we'll have Bioneural Gel Packs like in Star Trek, which are both memory and computing devices, and consist of a whole load of artificial neurons like in a brain, maybe this could be a way to do it?
Well, it's WORN if you use up all of it when reading it, but as I (poorly, it seems ) explained in the video, you can easily make lots (exponential) of copies of your data using PCR and read those instead, leaving your original as a forever backup. And yeah, parts of this seemed very Star Trek to me, which is why it's so cool that, at least in the lab, it's actually happening! Also, yes, our DNA is packaged into chromosomes in cells, but we also now have the ability to write and read synthetic DNA which uses the same DNA bases but is made by machine! This is what would be used in this scenario, and it would hang out in a tube in a freezer rather than in our cells.
DNA is creepy. It's just too perfect. I just have a feeling that it can't come from Earth. The reason DNA is so perfect is probably because it's one of the most important things about life. If you spend 4000 million years polishing a rock, that rock would become so fucking perfect. In the case of Earth that rock became life, animals, humans, trees etc.
Ok as a computer guy I have to chime in. First of all I loved this and it is fascinating and its so cool. But the actual amount of magnetic material in a hard drive is VERY small, something like 0.6 micrograms. Most of the weight is in creating the systems to quickly access that data. The same thing might have to happen for DNA, that the density of data has to decrease to increase access speeds. So we might end up having so sacrifice data density for data accessibility like we did for magnetic storage. I say that knowing absolutely nothing about the mechanics of DNA storage as they relate to magnetic storage....just some late night viewing thoughts that I thought were interesting to bring up...that per unit mass, I imagine magnetic and DNA are actually very similar, but the total mass of the hard drive unit is significantly larger because of the system used to access it quickly. To be fair you might need to include the weight of the DNA decoder-thingamagic that will have to accompany it.
Ohhhh, interesting. I didn't realize so much of the weight was "access stuff." I think my counter-question (as a DNA person who knows little about harddrives) is that storage wise, you still need to put the whole harddrive on a shelf somewhere, right? You can't just store the magnetic bits (super technical term)? Whereas for DNA the storage mass is completely separate from the decoding/sequencing, so you just have one sequencer for every room full of freezers stacked high with DNA. So that's where the space saving would come into effect. Or is it possible to store the magnetic bits separate from the "access bits" of the harddrive?
Ya, DNA built in form factor is awesome for jobs we haven't ever considered doing. Like we could do regular data dumps of the internet or something...which is just a silly thing to consider now a days. It might never do the job of a hard drive but open up ways of thinking about big data we just couldn't before!
There are removable hard drives (like the SyQuest drives from the 90s) which separate the storage medium from the rest of the disk drive, but a big problem is that today's data densities require extremely small distances and tolerances between the drive heads and the disks, making removable disks impractical. The closest commercial technology we have today are tape(!) backup drives, which are still used for archival storage and backups, even at datacenter scales.
One academic paper on DNA storage (homes.cs.washington.edu/~luisceze/publications/dnastorage-asplos16.pdf) says that current tape density is 10 GB/mm³, with some experimental technologies reaching 100 GB/mm³. But DNA could theoretically hold 1 EB/mm³, which as they point out, is eight orders of magnitude more dense than tape. And while hard disks and tapes have storage lifespans of 3-30 years, DNA can retain data for centuries.
smidgeION is a sequencer that plugs into the iPhone’s lightning port. The hardware can get pretty small, significantly smaller than a hard drive, they are approaching thumb drive sizes. I question something else, read write speeds. Flash drives can easily read at hundreds of MB/s while DNA would be much slower. Write speeds would be even worse. I personally see this replacing magnetic tape that is typically used to backup. For standard IO, not quite.
This has got to be one of the most well presented genetics videos that I have ever seen! I just finished my masters in cancer research and now I'm working as a research tech, and I always try to find interesting way to share with people some of what I do, but honestly this was a really really well made video! I loved it! Also, I am new to your channel, can't wait to catch up on all of your other videos!! :) have a good day!
Thank you!!!! I'm so glad you liked it :)
Wasn't sure what your video was going to be about. There was no reason for you to have doubt about the quality. Another fantastic video.
Thank you!
I was skeptical when I opened this but you (and Dina) answered all of my doubts. Good job presenting this topic. It was very interesting !
I wonder how fast we can make the read speed of the DNA will be in the future. It doesn't need to be that fast, it would just need to be as fast as tape to be used as long-term cold storage.
It would be really cool to have data backup in more formats (and locations) than just HDD and tapes.
Great Video. Brilliantly written and executed. The wait was worth it.
Thank you!!
its so cool with this technology, like recently scientists from the Church lab at MIT has encoded a movie to DNA of a population of bacteria, and then they were able to recover almost 100% of it back. I was very surprised as the logic behind this technology is so simple (relatively speaking), but yet very powerful. CRISPR/Cas9 technology has certainly opened way for much more sophisticated genetics than ever before.
I absolutely love your videos! You have inspired me to start my own educational channel. Keep up the great videos!
-Cheers
Thank you! And good luck on your own!
Alex Dainis Thank you for the kind words.It definitely has been a journey over the past few months, but it has been a fun one. Hope you have a pleasant week.
-Cheers
Subscribed!
You are awesome!
DNA is just awesome and this is so interesting! Thank you so much for doing these videos. Maybe in the future people will just have their own Illumina sequencers at home. A private cheap and good sequencer would come very handy at the moment =P
Hi! I just stumbled upon your channel this mourning, and I found it very helpful, as I am an incoming chemistry Ph.D. student. Would it be possible for you to do a video of 'what you wished you knew when you first entered grad school?' Thank you for your channel!
This is my new favorite channel!
Sounds like it will be an excellent offline storage and/or archive medium. As a near line or online storage medium we'd need a way to synthesize and sequence the DNA in nanoseconds. Which I think might be a much bigger deal than the actual data storage aspect.
Also, I really like this format, keep 'em coming!
Thanks, I like this format too! They take a lot longer to make, but I'm way prouder of them!
And the sequencer I talked about in my DNA in Space video is *almost* real time sequencing, but you still need to prep the DNA, process the files from the sequencer, etc. I think it could get to a point some day where it's an "Oh, I want to look at this file in an hour, I'll "download" it from my DNA now," but I don't think we're going to be at true real time searching as if it's a harddrive anytime soon. Definitely more of an archival storage method. BUT DNA technology advances surprise me all the time, so who knows...
I ran some numbers. That 2Tb HDD you use as an example is capable of reading data at about 125MBytes/s (average for 5.25" 7200RPM drives). That is about 1000Mbit/s or 2 bits per millisecond. 2 bits would equate to a single DNA base pair. If we could sequence DNA that fast then we'd be able sequence 2,000 pairs per second. No idea how that compares to the rate at which we can sequence DNA today.
It is very interesting to me that this is an area where your skills as a biologist can be used in conjunction with my skills as a IT systems administrator/engineer. Two fields that seem to be completely unrelated and yet are seemingly moving towards a weird convergence.
awesome vid, reminds me of the holographic storage that I'd saw on the tv show "beyond2000" back in the 90s with richard hatch (precursor to cnet) which kind of turned into what dual layer blurays turned into, though we still don't have a acrylic cube like device that you put on a light table to read/write, like in the segment. This is much cooler, but BEWARE , have we learned nothing from the outcome of the construction of the infosphere! (its a futurama ref btw ;) )
Sounds like it would be ideal for archiving, and less so for anything where speed is critical.
HI Alex i am inspired from your experienced researched work on DNA that's was good and i firstly watch your video i just have one question that how you manage your things into the practical life?
THANK YOU!
Another interesting video. Good job Alex!
Thank you!
Great video. I was surprised at the 100% recovery of the amplified DNA!
Excellent job... and I think even worthy as a segment on the Discovery Channel or the like AS IS... keep it up, just don't forget to finish your degree! ;)
Thank you! That's a huge compliment and I really appreciate it! And yes, eye on the prize, gotta get that PhD. After that there will hopefully be much more frequent videos of this quality :)
So is it already standard to assign 00 as A, 01 as C, 10 as G, and 11 as T?
this is literally AWESOME!!! thanks for the amazing video 👍👍👍👍
Thank *you* for watching!!
Do they use any error-correction codes?
By the way, the most interesting part - the DNA synthesis in the reactor - was not discussed. :|
love all your videos 😍.it's amazing to see how science is all around us.keep making more videos and hope to see some live experiments demonstration 🔬
That's so cool! I had no idea scientists had actually managed to store info in DNA. I knew about the concept from my biology-book, but I think it was printed in 2014 so it's a bit outdated.
Science is moving so quickly, especially in genetics, things are outdated quickly these days!
Oh my gosh! That's suuuper cool :D I hope to see and USE this technology in the future! Thank's for sharing this crazy information :D
I wonder if bitrot would be a thing with DNA.
Bitrot is a problem with Harddrives when a bit is randomly flipped and therefore corrupts the file. This can be managed today by using more modern file systems (like ZFS). Is it possible for a DNA sequense to be damaged between the time you write the data and the time you retrieve it.
Good question! So one of the things Dina (and the paper) talk about is the importance of redundancy to prevent issues like this. Each segment of data is encoded multiple times so that there's plenty of backup in case something happens between write and read time (or if the sequencer gets a base or two wrong, as they're not perfect!)
I didn't get exactly what is the relevance of making copies of copies of the DNA. If you sequence your DNA sample and then make a new DNA sample from the bits you recovered, and the bits are a 100% match to the original data, doesn't this new DNA sample have the same "error rate" as the first DNA sample ever created?
i didn't get the reusing part..
1) the 'machine' will get the DNA sample with the files
2) Copie the sample, and Add to the original pool, so it can used again later
3) Read the Files in the sample
is that it?
+Ricard Sorry this was unclear! The main point is that you have a finite amount of DNA with your data stored in it, and you don't want to use it all up by reading it. But the scientists used PCR to make exponential (and if you kept going, near infinite) copies of it, so you can just read the data from all of those copies so that you don't have to use up all of your original DNA.
please do your gel series you Where going to do
Cool Im learning genetic engindering in med school, and this is the future!!
That is so cool, I've not thought of using DNA in that way :)But to be honest, not sure how practical it really is. Sequencing now takes like 1 day for a usual plasmid insert...if the speed of seq. would greatly increase, we would need like huge seqencing centers to manage all those datas from all the people wanting access to their data, right?Anyway would be really cool to have an eppi with DNA as your future USB stick or so in a few hundred years :D
I like this idea. I know nothing about biology, physiology, genes, DNA and that sort of thing but I was actually thinking about finding some books and reading about them. Interesting video!
What if the file isnt of even bits long?
Loved the video!
Did you get a new camera or something? This is your best looking video yet.
+ZorroVulpes Used a different lens! I have felt like things have been a little fuzzy on my normal lens lately so switched to a 35mm. Definitely nicer. And thanks!!
If the data is encoded in 200 bit units, how is the data reorganized into the whole? Are they stitched together as a single chain of DNA or only reassembled digitally? The way the process was described it seemed like the data was stored on many different 100bp strands, but I might have misunderstood.
It is indeed stored on many 200bp strands, as the illumina platform sequences DNA in 200bp pieces. The DNA Fountain algorithm stitches them back together digitally. I would be doing an injustice to the work if I mis-explained the stitching process here, but simply yes, the binary file is broken into small pieces, each piece becomes a 200bp physical fragment of DNA, each 200bp piece is sequenced, and then they are digitally stitched back into the full file.
Thank you for the straight forward explanation. And as always, thank you for the wonderful content you provide.
Star Trek TNG: "The Drumhead" Airdate 29 Apr, 1991
WORF: (hands over a hypospray) This is J'Dan's. A hypospray he uses to treat his Ba'ltmasor Syndrome. But this has been fitted with an optical reader specially modified to read data from Starfleet isolinear chips. He can extract digital information from a computer, encode it in the form of amino acid sequences, and transfer those sequences into a fluid in the syringe. Then he injects someone, perhaps even without their knowledge.
SATIE: Or perhaps with their knowledge.
WORF: The information would be carried in their bloodstream in the form of inert proteins.
DNA will probably first be a replacement for magnetic tape data backup systems for companies like Google. Yes we still use tape. It's cheap and has lots of space.
Your lab lighting looks very professional, have you changed it lately?
Yes! I got a ring light at Christmas, which is compact enough to fit in my lab but also bright enough to make things look better. I also used a nicer 35mm lens on this video (which I've had for... 6 years but never think to use) which I think helped a lot.
whered you get them teeth?
i think dna data storage would be hard to write and hard to read. access time would be shit too. relative to an ssd or even a hdd.
agreed
Hey alex, absolutely love the concept behind using DNA as storage, but do you actually think it's real life applicable with the normal day to day consumer?
Funny enough, the cloud backup company I use for my home computer "promoted" DNA data storage as their April Fool's Joke this year. I think that's where it might become a consumer product: long term, off site storage that you only rarely access.
Great video. Inspiring
The thing about storing digital information into DNA is that computer viruses would become crazy!
Like some guys around here, I'm also a "computer guy" but in the "crazy science" side of things, the real problem with Quantum processors and DNA storage is how the interact, in the form of "access type", "access time", latency in some other words BUT we're living with PWS (poorly written software), if we plan to use DNA as storage, well let me tell you, this remind me the old "string recorders" who give birth to phonographs and magnetic tape later on, those devices were used as "MEMORY" in mainframes using ISAM because there's more storage devices than Hard Drive. WELL TOO MUCH TALKING if you want DNA as storage, that's doable but we must change our mentality. The most amazing computer or processor, is in our head, less faster than a silicon one and even less faster than a quantum but... they can self-replicate, socialize, mobilize and... they construct other computers from different materials. DNA and molecular biology is very interesting, we just need better sensors and new paradigms.
Well... if i don't store it in my own genome, there's plenty of other candidates in my body's microbiome.
I could store my data in my gut bacteria, and everytime i poop i'm emptying my recycle bin.
I think this concept was touched on briefly in Iain Banks' book "Excession".
That is a fascinating concept... Despite the *obvious big issues* with editing your DNA to store data there, I think it's kind of a cool "brain candy" idea to try and figure out how you'd do it and where you'd put it and what the consequences would be, etc. But putting it in bacteria makes it a lot more interesting...
oooh this is super interesting!
Last time I was this early... well, I've never been this early. Hi Alex!
Oh hi! Welcome :)
Alex Dainis Oh my gosh! You literally got me through my high school science classes!
Have you made a video about how super cool is to be writting a review article?
The goal is to have the video come out the same day the review is published! :)
Alex Dainis So you are writting one right now?
Yes! Already received reviewers' comments, now it's time to revise and resubmit!
Alex Dainis Thats super cool. Do let us know when its accepted so we can look it up at pubmed.
Do you use researchgate? It would be cool to follow you there.
This is fascinating!
I think so too :)
Great vid. :)
Haha, The first question I had was who stuck the modified DNA into a cell to see what happened. But it doesn't look like Dina was keen to do that.
And rightly so, I think!
Quantum networking, optical interconnects and DNA storage. I'd kill to be Fry from Futurama so I could wake up to all of this being common place. :D
I love your videos they are soo great to see because for me It's very interesting to talk to scientists
Could you put the information in organisms like bacteria or mammals and then sent them over the ocean?
Can you store it everywhere out of a freezer, too?
We can also use asteroids that are passing by the earth to send information into an another solar system
like you and Dina said like the Voyager Golden Record plate
You inspire me to be creative and think about it :) Thanks!
I'm excited about your next video
Gabriel
Could dna be crystallized
Do you foresee it getting into our homes in 5, 10, 100 years?
This is seriously cool.
Right?! I saw the paper and immediately started telling everyone around me about it. It's so cool!
Please make a new video soon! You have no idea how much I love your videos😦🙈 I'm even considering coming to Grad school there just to be in the same lab as you hahaha I swear you're like a female version of me❤
0:17 One of these is not like the others.
So ... when do we start looking for messages in existing DNA ? this is some Orphan Black level stuff right there. Brilliant.
Can I HV yr mail?
Your videos r awesome
Hey you're Greek! I never realized it until my wife saw your name in my sub list and asked me "who's the Greek girl?"
We're both Greek and I've been following your for several years. But I never realized you are Greek.
Ты знаеш почему я плачу? Закрыли канал моего брата на You Tube! Забрали цэлый год нашей жизни! Это как уничтожить альбом с детскими фотографиями. За что? Как так можно?
Мы не нарушали правила сообщества, а снимали веселое видео для нашей семьи, для друзей. Мы так старались, веселились, волновались, дружили. Мы учились снимать видео, слушая ваши советы. Но у нас это отобрали!!!. Мы живем в стране, где часто нарушают права человека, но от любимого You Tube мы такого не ожидали. У нас нет богатых и влиятельных покровителе. Нас просто так можно забрать часть нашей жизни (ведь мы потратили на эти видео много сил и времени) , растоптать наши надежды???
Вы такие красивые, сильные, смелые!! Быть может вы заступитесь за двоих деток, которые так любят снимать видео? Хотя у вас и так много забот, извините, что потревожили вас, с любовью Саша и Даник.
Wow amazing
This is fucking awesome!
+Jonathan Stern Indeed!!
my mind is fucking blown!
no rick astley?
like how cool would that be?
ask what was first thing stored on DNA
and then rick roll evereyone
the read/write speeds must be really slow storing things in DNA not to speak about the seek times
Very, very slow. Definitely an archival option at the moment.
This reminds me of back in the 90s, when researchers found a way to store enormous amounts of data on a roll of scotch tape. Nowadays, we all have Scotch drives in our computers, don't we? Oh, wait, but they're being replaced by holographic crystal drives, which are written and read with a laser, and store even more data on a cube crystal of 1cm length. So then, in 10-20 years, we might just have DNA drives in our computers, just like that ;-)
No, seriously: Isn't DNA packaged into chromosomes? And aren't those packaged into cells? Also, doesn't the sequencer destroy the DNA while "reading" it? This would be a WORN type of memory then, which stands for "Write Once Read Never".
Sorry for my typical German pessimism, but even after watching this video, which explained it all very well, I can't believe this is going to happen anytime soon, just yet.
But maybe, when we'll have Bioneural Gel Packs like in Star Trek, which are both memory and computing devices, and consist of a whole load of artificial neurons like in a brain, maybe this could be a way to do it?
Well, it's WORN if you use up all of it when reading it, but as I (poorly, it seems ) explained in the video, you can easily make lots (exponential) of copies of your data using PCR and read those instead, leaving your original as a forever backup. And yeah, parts of this seemed very Star Trek to me, which is why it's so cool that, at least in the lab, it's actually happening!
Also, yes, our DNA is packaged into chromosomes in cells, but we also now have the ability to write and read synthetic DNA which uses the same DNA bases but is made by machine! This is what would be used in this scenario, and it would hang out in a tube in a freezer rather than in our cells.
ALEX IS BACK, HURRAY!
DNA is creepy. It's just too perfect. I just have a feeling that it can't come from Earth. The reason DNA is so perfect is probably because it's one of the most important things about life. If you spend 4000 million years polishing a rock, that rock would become so fucking perfect. In the case of Earth that rock became life, animals, humans, trees etc.
Wow
My promote kardo