Researchers at the University of Southampton have shown that human DNA can be stored for billions of years and survive the harshest environments. This is made possible by using a special type of quartz glass. This opens up new possibilities for storing biological information for future generations.
Using nanostructured quartz glass, researchers at the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have developed a “5D optical data storage” system that will change the way we archive and preserve critical information. This new technology, enabled by femtosecond laser writing, is ultra-durable, data dense and can withstand extreme environmental conditions.
A New Era of Forever Data Storage
The 5D optical storage can store 360 terabytes (TB) of data on a single disc and can withstand temperatures of 1,000°C. But more impressively, the data stored in this medium will last virtually forever – 13.8 billion years at 190°C according to the team. It’s perfect for eternal data archiving, ideal for libraries, national archives, museums and other organisations that have to preserve humanity’s most valuable information.
“We can save the last evidence of our civilisation: everything we’ve learned will not be forgotten,” said Professor Peter Kazansky, ORC researcher. “It’s amazing to think we have a way to preserve documents, information and now biological data in space for future generations.”
The team’s method involves encoding information in five dimensions, using femtosecond lasers to create nanostructures in fused quartz. The nanostructures change the way light passes through the glass and the encoded data can be read out using an optical microscope with a polariser, like Polaroid sunglasses.
Storing Genetic Data in Five Dimensions
The technique is now being applied to human genetic data. Using the same femtosecond laser technology, the team is recording the data in five dimensions – size, orientation and three-dimensional position – creating an almost indestructible archive of DNA sequences. This could be crucial not only for future scientific research but also for preserving the genetic information of plants, animals and potentially endangered species.
The promise of this long-lasting data storage could be key to biodiversity conservation. As Kazansky and his team point out, having a secure, unchangeable repository of DNA from a wide range of species could be vital if humanity ever faces a mass extinction event. DNA archives stored in quartz glass could help scientists bring back species long after they have gone extinct.
Encoding DNA
The process of encoding DNA onto quartz glass involves lasers etching the genetic sequence into nanoscopic pores, each 20 nanometers in diameter. The sequence is made up of four bases—adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T)—which make up the 3 billion nucleotide pairs in the human genome.
Helixwork Technologies, a bioinformatics company, worked with the University of Southampton to validate the data stored. Each base of the genome was read and checked 150 times to ensure the data could be replicated thousands or millions of years later.
Kazansky said: “In a future where humanity is extinct or we lose a lot of biodiversity, this technology could be the key to bringing back entire species, including ourselves.”
Biological Preservation
This technology has applications beyond human DNA. The system has been used to store genetic data from many different organisms, including plant and animal species. This has led to talk of “biobanks” on a global scale where the genetic information of endangered species could be stored forever. One such proposal is to build a lunar biobank, where DNA is stored on the Moon as a backup in case of a global disaster on Earth.
Kazansky’s team is now looking to take this further. “We want to create a universal biological archive” he said, “these archives would give future generations an unprecedented resource to understand extinct or endangered species”.
Challenges
While it works in the lab, there are practical problems to solve. Retrieving the data in the far future is a big one. The ORC team have tried to mitigate this by putting engraved keys on the quartz glass, so instructions for decoding the data. But will future civilizations or AI have the tech to read and retrieve this?
Dr Thomas Heinis, an expert in biological data storage at Imperial College London who wasn’t involved in the research, said: “It’s impressive but we need to make sure it’s accessible over long periods of time. If today’s technology can’t read decade old formats we can only imagine how hard it will be for a future civilization to interact with this data.”
The team are now looking for industry partners to help commercialize and develop the technology. As they prepare to present their findings at the SPIE—The International Society for Optical Engineering Conference in San Francisco there is growing interest in the applications of this technology across multiple disciplines.
Summary
5D optical storage in quartz glass is a major breakthrough in data preservation and could last billions of years. We can now encode everything from human DNA to priceless historical documents. While there are problems to solve, the idea of preserving all of human civilization and maybe even the Earth’s biodiversity for millions of years to come is exciting for scientists and archivists alike.
Now it’s here. Literally. In glass. In femtoseconds.
