Music album to be stored on DNA

The technology developed at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich allows data to be stored on genetic information for thousands of years compared to the 30 years that CDs generally last for.  

Now, the British trip hop band Massive Attack plan to use the technology to mark the 20th anniversary of their album “Mezzanine” by preserving it for eternity, announced the ETH in a statement.

“While the information stored on a CD or hard disk is a sequence of zeros and ones, biology stores genetic information in a sequence of the four building blocks of DNA: A, C, G and T,” explained ETH Professor Robert Grass.

Before being stored, the album must be compressed. An American company is currently producing 920,000 short DNA strands, which will contain all of “Mezzanine”’s information. Turbobeads, an ETH spin-off, will then pour these molecules into 5,000 tiny glass spheres.

Invisible to the naked eye, the glass beads will be stored in a tiny bottle of water. The DNA can be removed from the glass beads at any time, allowing DNA sequencing to read the stored music file and play it back on a computer. 

“Compared to traditional data-storage systems, it is quite complex and expensive to store information on DNA," commented Grass. “However, once information is stored on DNA, we can make millions of copies quickly and cost-effectively.”

The 15-megabyte music album is the second-largest file ever stored on DNA, according to the ETH. Only the software company Microsoft has a bigger data storage project.