Emerging Approaches to DNA Data Storage: Challenges and Prospects

Abstract

With the total amount of worldwide data skyrocketing, the global data storage demand is predicted to grow to 1.75 × 10 14 GB by 2025. Traditional storage methods have difficulties keeping pace given that current storage media have a maximum density of 10 3 GB/mm 3 . As such, data production will far exceed the capacity of currently available storage methods. The costs of maintaining and transferring data, as well as the limited lifespans and significant data losses associated with current technologies also demand advanced solutions for information storage. Nature offers a powerful alternative through the storage of information that defines living organisms in unique orders of four bases (A, T, C, G) located in molecules called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA molecules as information carriers have many advantages over traditional storage media. Their high storage density, potentially low maintenance cost, ease of synthesis, and chemical modification make them an ideal alternative for information storage. To this end, rapid progress has been made over the past decade by exploiting user-defined DNA materials to encode information. In this review, we discuss the most recent advances of DNA-based data storage with a major focus on the challenges that remain in this promising field, including the current intrinsic low speed in data writing and reading and the high cost per byte stored. Alternatively, data storage relying on DNA nanostructures (as opposed to DNA sequence) as well as on other combinations of nanomaterials and biomolecules are proposed with promising technological and economic advantages. In summarizing the advances that have been made and underlining the challenges that remain, we provide a roadmap for the ongoing research in this rapidly growing field, which will enable the development of technological solutions to the global demand for superior storage methodologies.

Towards the controlled enzymatic synthesis of LNA containing oligonucleotides

“…Synthetic oligonucleotides play essential roles in an increasing number of applications including storage of digital information in DNA, (Lee et al, 2019b;Doricchi et al, 2022b) drug discovery, (Lindenburg et al, 2020;Vummidi et al, 2022) and the development of mRNA vaccines. (Jackson et al, 2020;Chaudhary et al, 2021) Besides the need for production of larger numbers of sequences and scaling up to kilograms, demands vary widely in terms of size and also in sequence and chemical composition.…”

“…In this context, controlled enzymatic synthesis represents a promising approach where temporarily blocked nucleoside triphosphates are incorporated sequentially into DNA mainly by templateindependent polymerases such as the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT). (Jensen and Davis, 2018;Lee et al, 2019b;Sarac and Hollenstein, 2019;Doricchi et al, 2022a;Lu et al, 2022;Van Giesen et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2022;Ashley et al, 2023;Hoose et al, 2023) The blocking groups can be affixed either at the 3'-hydroxyl moiety to prevent further nucleophilic attack on the -phosphorous of incoming nucleoside triphosphates (Bollum, 1962;Mackey and Gilham, 1971;Chen et al, 2010;Hutter et al, 2010;Gardner et al, 2012;Chen et al, 2013;Mathews et al, 2016;Jang et al, 2019) or on the nucleobase which then act as inhibitors of polymerases. (Bowers et al, 2009;Palluk et al, 2018) While robust protocols have been established for DNA, (Palluk et al, 2018;Lee et al, 2019b;Jung et al, 2022;Venter et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2022) changing the sugar chemistry to ribose (RNA) or to more complex modification patterns deviating from natural systems (xenonucleic acids, XNAs (Chaput and Herdewijn, 2019;Chaput et al, 2020)) raises yet unmet challenges.…”

Comment on “Emerging Approaches to DNA Data Storage: Challenges and Prospects”

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Metrics & MoreArticle Recommendations R ecently, a paper of Doricchi et al was published in ACS Nano. 1 The authors provide an up-to-date review of the existing opportunities and barriers associated with "sequence-based" and "structure-based" DNA data storage. In this commentary, we focus on the business and societal perspectives of DNA data storage diffusion which are necessary for developing a comprehensive understanding of other opportunities and barriers that arise from nontechnological factors.

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“…Recently, a paper of Doricchi et al was published in ACS Nano . The authors provide an up-to-date review of the existing opportunities and barriers associated with “sequence-based” and “structure-based” DNA data storage.…”

“…Projections, however, have not been fully supported by data, yet. The main hurdles to commercialization are linked to the technical limitations reported in Doricchi et al’s review . Sustained and promising research trajectories are nowadays active to improve the efficiency of the underlying processes.…”