DNA DATA STORAGE
Bridging the gap between biology, engineering and computer science
Throughout evolution, Biology has found an almost-perfect molecule to pass information down through the millennia. Whether, for a simple bacterium or the largest whale, DNA achieves high information density while permitting cellular machinery rapid random access retrieval to decode everything from a single protein to the development of an entire human brain.
Humanity’s rapidly growing data storage and computing needs make it tempting to exploit optimised biological molecules and processes, but biology is messy, poorly understood and much more specialised for life than it is for our needs — we propose to use DNA for storage together with a rationally designed, well-characterised and robust molecular computing architecture.
The DISCO project will address the challenge of engineering a programmable and robust DNA storage and computing platform. DISCO combines powerful molecular-algorithmic ideas from DNA computing with notions of thermodynamic stability from DNA nanostructures, to provide an expressive and robust system design. The project proposes the use of long DNA scaffold strands, upon which hundreds of smaller strands bind to store data, which can be later read, erased, rewritten and computed upon.
DISCO begins with the aim of trialling a small, but thoroughly characterised and modelled prototype, that facilitates storage and computation on 10 bits
Then, DISCO will scale up the system to hundreds or even a thousand bits by leveraging recent technological advances to enable high-throughput techniques at both the experimental and data-readout stages. Finally, DISCO will be extended to two-dimensional.
DNA origami structures, each carrying about a hundred bits, but with millions of structures in the same test tube, exhibiting DNA storage and computation in a distributed system at a massively parallel scale.
Our Mission is to contribute to the global digital data storage and computation challenge
Our goal is to achieve this in a way that is scalable, environmentally sustainable and increases the integrity and reliability of data storage over longer time periods than current technologies. We strive to go beyond storage of data to develop novel methods for computation.
Community, Education and Research Hub
Research Hub
View our publications on revolutionising data storage. Access our findings and reports on our website 
Software Innovation
Pioneering data storage software aiding in the process of storing, organising, and accessing data.
DISCO News
Stay informed with the most recent advancements and critical insights from our DISCO DNA Research.
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Maynooth University
Hamilton Institute
Maynooth
Co. Kildare
Ireland
Funding
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Innovation Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
