Windows 10: Microsoft and UW demonstrate first fully automated DNA data storage

Brink · Mar 21, 2019

Researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington have demonstrated the first fully automated system to store and retrieve data in manufactured DNA — a key step in moving the technology out of the research lab and into commercial datacenters.

In a simple proof-of-concept test, the team successfully encoded the word “hello” in snippets of fabricated DNA and converted it back to digital data using a fully automated end-to-end system, which is described in a new paper published March 21 in Nature Scientific Reports.

DNA can store digital information in a space that is orders of magnitude smaller than datacenters use today. It’s one promising solution for storing the exploding amount of data the world generates each day, from business records and cute animal videos to medical scans and images from outer space.

Microsoft is exploring ways to close a looming gap between the amount of data we are producing that needs to be preserved and our capacity to store it. That includes developing algorithms and molecular computing technologies to encode and retrieve data in fabricated DNA, which could fit all the information currently stored in a warehouse-sized datacenter into a space roughly the size of a few board game dice.

“Our ultimate goal is to put a system into production that, to the end user, looks very much like any other cloud storage service — bits are sent to a datacenter and stored there and then they just appear when the customer wants them,” said Microsoft principal researcher Karin Strauss. “To do that, we needed to prove that this is practical from an automation perspective.”

Information is stored in synthetic DNA molecules created in a lab, not DNA from humans or other living things, and can be encrypted before it is sent to the system. While sophisticated machines such as synthesizers and sequencers already perform key parts of the process, many of the intermediate steps until now have required manual labor in the research lab. But that wouldn’t be viable in a commercial setting, said Chris Takahashi, senior research scientist at the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

“You can’t have a bunch of people running around a datacenter with pipettes — it’s too prone to human error, it’s too costly and the footprint would be too large,” Takahashi said.

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For the technique to make sense as a commercial storage solution, costs need to decrease for both synthesizing DNA — essentially custom building strands with meaningful sequences — and the sequencing process that extracts the stored information. Trends are moving rapidly in that direction, researchers say.

Automation is another key piece of that puzzle, as it would enable storage at a commercial scale and make it more affordable, Microsoft researchers say.

Under the right conditions, DNA can last much longer than current archival storage technologies that degrade in a matter of decades. Some DNA has managed to persist in less than ideal storage conditions for tens of thousands of years in mammoth tusks and bones of early humans, and it should have relevancy as long as people are alive.

The automated DNA data storage system uses software developed by the Microsoft and UW team that converts the ones and zeros of digital data into the As, Ts, Cs and Gs that make up the building blocks of DNA. Then it uses inexpensive, largely off-the-shelf lab equipment to flow the necessary liquids and chemicals into a synthesizer that builds manufactured snippets of DNA and then push them into a storage vessel.

When the system needs to retrieve the information, it adds other chemicals to properly prepare the DNA and uses microfluidic pumps to push the liquids into a machine that “reads” the DNA sequences and convert it back to information that a computer can understand. The goal of the project was not to prove how fast or inexpensively the system could work, researchers say, but simply to demonstrate that automation is possible.

One immediate benefit of having an automated DNA storage system is that it frees researchers up to probe deeper questions, instead of spending time searching for bottles of reagents or repetitively squeezing drops of liquids into test tubes.

“Having an automated system to do the repetitive work allows those of us working in the lab to take a higher view and begin to assemble new strategies — to essentially innovate much faster,” said Microsoft researcher Bichlien Nguyen.

The team from the Molecular Information Systems Lab has already demonstrated that it can store cat photographs, great literary works, pop videos and archival recordings in DNA, and retrieve those files without errors in a research setting. To date they’ve been able to store 1 gigabyte of data in DNA, besting their previous world record of 200 MB.

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To store data in DNA, algorithms convert the 1s and 0s in digital data to ACTG sequences in DNA. Microsoft and University of Washington researchers stored and retrieved the word “hello” using the first fully automated system for DNA storage.

The researchers have also developed techniques to perform meaningful computation — like searching for and retrieving only images that contain an apple or a green bicycle — using the molecules themselves and without having to convert the files back into a digital format.

“We are definitely seeing a new kind of computer system being born here where you are using molecules to store data and electronics for control and processing. Putting them together holds some really interesting possibilities for the future,” said UW Allen School professor Luis Ceze.

Unlike silicon-based computing systems, DNA-based storage and computing systems have to use liquids to move molecules around. But fluids are inherently different than electrons and require entirely new engineering solutions.

The UW team, in collaboration with Microsoft, is also developing a programmable system that automates lab experiments by harnessing the properties of electricity and water to move droplets around on a grid of electrodes. The full stack of software and hardware, nicknamed “Puddle” and “PurpleDrop,” can mix, separate, heat or cool different liquids and run lab protocols.

The goal is to automate lab experiments that are currently being done by hand or by expensive liquid handling robots — but for a fraction of the cost.

Next steps for the MISL team include integrating the simple end-to-end automated system with technologies such as PurpleDrop and those that enable searching with DNA molecules. The researchers specifically designed the automated system to be modular, allowing it to evolve as new technologies emerge for synthesizing, sequencing or working with DNA.

“What’s great about this system is that if we wanted to replace one of the parts with something new or better or faster, we can just plug that in,” Nguyen said. “It gives us a lot of flexibility for the future.”

:)

Brink · Mar 21, 2019

Microsoft buying another 10 million DNA strands for storage research

DNA storage could allow vast amounts of data to be stored for thousands of years.

Microsoft is buying another ten million strands of DNA to use as part of research into new ways of storing digital data.

The long-chain oligonucleotide strands of DNA will be used by researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington to encode digital data at high density.

DNA's main job, of course, is storing the genetic instructions governing the growth and development of all known living creatures -- something it has done for billions of years. Now scientists are trying to use that ability to store digital data too.

Microsoft made its initial purchase of DNA from Twist Bioscience a year ago, buying 10 million strands of synthetic DNA. Since then the organizations have improved storage density, reducing the cost of DNA digital data storage, by encoding more data per strand: in July last year the Microsoft and Washington researchers said they had stored a record 200 megabytes of data on DNA in a space the size of a pencil tip...
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Read more: Microsoft is buying another 10 million strands of DNA for storage research | ZDNet

Brink · Mar 21, 2019

Why the future of storage is all about DNA

DNA is so flexible that it can be used to create everything from an amoeba to a human, a dinosaur to a dandelion. And it's so small that the DNA needed to create all these life forms can be fitted into a single cell just micrometers large.

And while DNA has existed for billions of years as a way of storing the blueprints for life, now researchers are beginning to explore its potential as a storage medium for digital data.

Some of tech's biggest names are already looking into DNA's potential for long-term data storage. Microsoft, for example, earlier this year announced it had worked with the University of Washington (UW) to store and retrieve 200MB of data -- including a song by OK Go! and the Declaration of Human Rights -- on DNA.

"We got to thinking that there's a trend in storage -- storage media is not growing the way we want it to. We know DNA is a very dense storage medium, and we know it has other properties that make it very interesting, like durability, and we go to this question of we should look at this as a potential storage medium," James Bornholt, a graduate student working on DNA storage in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, told ZDNet.

As you'd expect for a storage medium found in cells so small that can't be seen with the naked eye, DNA offers one major advantage over conventional tape or SSD storage: density. According to Washington University researchers, if DNA was its storage medium, all the data found in Facebook's recently-built Oregon cold storage datacenter could be fitted into the space of a sugar cube.

Another advantage: DNA is pretty much the oldest known storage medium there is. For those that have the algorithms to decode it, it can be read thousands of years after its creation if it's stored in the right way.

Built of four units -- adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine -- that are linked to each other by hydrogen bonds and branch from a sugar-phosphate backbone, DNA is deceptively simple. But, by reading the way in which one base follows another, scientists have already begun to encode and decode information in much the same way as conventional computer storage uses a sequence of ones and zeroes.

With DNA being a base four system and binary base two, encoding digital data in DNA is relatively simple -- the zeros and ones are translated into cytosine, thymine, guanine, or adenine...
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Read more: From digital to biological: Why the future of storage is all about DNA | ZDNet

Bruce Hagen · Mar 21, 2019

DNA ad unlocker

Are you sure it's called DNA ad unlocker and not DNS Unlocker? If the latter......................

Follow the steps here.

https://malwaretips.com/blogs/ads-by-dns-unlocker-removal/

If it is not listed in the Control Panel, or it can't be removed there, move on to step 2. HitmanPro might not be needed.

Windows 10: Microsoft and UW demonstrate first fully automated DNA data storage

Microsoft and UW demonstrate first fully automated DNA data storage

Microsoft and UW demonstrate first fully automated DNA data storage

Microsoft and UW demonstrate first fully automated DNA data storage

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