High-Capacity Storage of Digital Information in DNA

Abstract

A method for storage of an item of information (210) is disclosed. The method comprises encoding bytes (720) in the item of information (210), and representing using a schema the encoded bytes by a DNA nucleotide to produce a DNA sequence (230). The DNA sequence (230) is broken into a plurality of overlapping DNA segments (240) and indexing information (250) added to the plurality of DNA segments. Finally, the plurality of DNA segments (240) is synthesized (790) and stored (795).

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of creating a plurality of DNA segments data to be provided to a DNA synthesis platform for controlling the synthesis of a plurality of DNA segments for storing an item of information, the method comprising:
 encoding bytes in an item of information, stored in a first computer file as a DNA sequence data, using a representation schema to represent the encoded bytes as at least one DNA nucleotide datum in the DNA sequence data;   splitting the DNA sequence data into a plurality of overlapping DNA segments data;   adding indexing information to the plurality of DNA segments data, the indexing information indicating a position in the DNA sequence data of any one nucleotide datum of any one of the plurality of DNA segments data; and   storing the plurality of DNA segments data in a machine-readable second computer file.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further including the addition of adapters data to the DNA segments data. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  using a base-3 scheme for encoding the bytes. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the representation schema used is designed such that adjacent ones of the DNA nucleotide data are different. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising adding a parity-check to the indexing information. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein alternate ones of the DNA segments data are reverse complemented. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the representation schema used is designed to avoid long, self-reverse complementary DNA segments data. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising providing to a DNA synthesis platform the plurality of DNA segments data for controlling the synthesis of a plurality of DNA segments from the DNA segments data. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising the step of synthesizing from the DNA segments data a plurality of DNA segments for storing an item of information. 
     
     
         10 . A non-volatile, non-transitory storage medium storing a plurality of DNA segments data to be provided to a DNA synthesis platform for controlling the synthesis of a plurality of DNA segments for storing an item of information, wherein the plurality of DNA segments data are created by a method comprising:
 encoding bytes in an item of information, stored in a first computer file, as a DNA sequence data using a representation schema to represent the encoded bytes as at least one DNA nucleotide datum in the DNA sequence data;   splitting the DNA sequence data into a plurality of overlapping DNA segments data; and   adding indexing information to the plurality of DNA segments data, the indexing information indicating a position in the DNA sequence data of any one of the plurality of DNA segments data.   
     
     
         11 . A computer program product comprising logic for executing the method according to  claim 1 .