Microsoft is the latest tech giant to be attracted to genetic molecules, following reports that Apple and IBM are also interested in examining human DNA.
Microsoft agreed to purchase 10 million long oligonucleotides, which it will use to encode digital data, a DNA research company announced this week. Oligonucleotides are commonly used in scientific research, since they can be synthesized in a lab and used for DNA sequencing. Like all DNA molecules, they are also extremely dense, which means they could theoretically store immense amounts of data.
Microsoft currently has an entire division of the company working on adapting DNA for data storage. It supports the research of more than 20 scientists, many of them professors at the University of Washington. But the company says using DNA to archive data is limited by the current state of DNA synthesis and sequencing, so it's not yet practical.
By purchasing its own molecules, from San Francisco-based biotech firm Twist, Microsoft is building on its existing tests and efforts to overcome the storage limits of silicon technology. Financial terms of the deal were not announced.
"The initial test phase with Twist demonstrated that we could encode and recover 100 percent of the digital data from synthetic DNA," Microsoft researcher Doug Carmean said in a statement. "We're still years away from a commercially viable product, but our early tests with Twist demonstrate that in the future we'll be able to substantially increase the density and durability of data storage."
Finding denser data storage technology will relieve the pressure on traditional optical disks, which take up a lot of space compared to organic molecules and are not as reliable. DNA is extremely dense—up to 1 exabyte per cubic millimeter—and durable, with a half-life of over 500 years. Microsoft expects the total quantity of the world's data to approach 16 zettabytes in 2017.