On October 2nd 2017, researchers at the University of Washington, Microsoft, and Twist Bioscience, announced that they had successfully recorded "Smoke On The Water," by Deep Purple and "Tutu," by Miles Davis onto synthetic DNA. The two songs were archived recordings from the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Dr Karen Strauss, senior researcher for Microsoft said, "The amount of DNA used to store these songs is much smaller than a grain of sand."
The process of storing files to DNA starts with a digital file of the music. The researchers then turn the 1s and 0s into the genetic code or nucleotide bases that make up DNA. Those nucleotides are Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine and go by the letters, A, G, C, and T. These chemicals pair up to create base pairs that form long strands that form a spiral structure, that's known as the double helix.
Each segment created containes 12 bytes of data along with a sequence number which is used to indicate the location of specific data within the DNA file. To decode the DNA file, the As, Cs, Ts, and Gs are converted back into 1s and 0s, which can be played as a standard digital file. At present, this method is a proof of concept project. However, researchers believe that as the cost of DNA sequencing comes down, the storage process will become more available to consumers.
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