Nucleic acid memory.

Information and communication technologies generate vast amounts of data that will far eclipse today’s data flows (Fig. 1). Memory materials must therefore be suitable for high-volume manufacturing. At the same time, they must have elevated information stability and limit the energy consumption and trailing environmental impacts that such flows will demand. Analysts estimate that global memory demand — at 3 × 1024 bits — will exceed projected silicon supply in 2040 (Fig. 1b and Supplementary Information sections 1 and 2). To meet such requirements, flashmemory manufacturers would need ~109 kg of silicon wafers even though the total projected wafer supply is ~107–108 kg (Supplementary Figs 1 and 2). Such forecasts motivate an exploration of unconventional materials with cost-competitive performance attributes. With information retention times that range from thousands to millions of years, volumetric density 103 times greater than flash memory and energy of operation 108 times less, we believe that DNA used as a memory-storage material in nucleic acid memory (NAM) products promises a viable and compelling alternative to electronic memory. In this Commentary, we discuss the information retention, density and energetics of NAM — specifically related to DNA — for non-biological and non-volatile memory applications, ranging from letters to libraries. The potential of NAM has often been dismissed, as nucleic acids are believed by some to be fragile and therefore unreliable. This is not the case. For example, the room-temperature half-life of ancient DNA exceeds 100 years1,2. Indeed, the complete genomes of an ~50,000-year-old Neanderthal3 recovered from Siberia and an ~700,000-year-old horse4 recovered from the Arctic permafrost (approximate average temperature –4 °C) have been sequenced. Still, the long-term stability of DNA and its decay kinetics are poorly understood at a per-bit (that is, base) level. As an energybarrier model shows (Methods), DNA has a retention time far exceeding electronic memory, and it can store information reliably over time. Through first-principle calculations, DNA has been validated as a model material for future NAM products (Supplementary Information section 8). Therefore, we call for increased cooperation between the biotechnology and semiconductor sectors to pair previously unfathomable technological advances — such as those from the Human Genome Project — with the scaling expertise of the semiconductor industry.