EMILY LEPROUST FISHED around in her pocket until
she found what she was seeking: a stainless steel tube,
about the size of a large pill capsule. She set it on the
table with a metallic ping. “In this you can put dozens of
Google data centers,” she says. “If not hundreds.”
Leproust’s company, Twist Bioscience, makes what
goes in that capsule: DNA. Hyperdense, easy to replicate,
and stable over millennia, it’s close to an ideal archival
storage medium. Twist engineers the DNA to repre-
sent the data, translating the binary code of machines
into the genetic code of life (for example: 00=A, 01=G,
10=C, 11=T). If you want to read that data, say, two cen-
turies later, you sequence the DNA and translate it back
to binary. Silicon Valley is investing in DNA storage to
replace the short-lived magnetic tape and flash drives
housing much of the world’s data. By 2040, researchers
estimate humans will generate so much data there won’t
be enough silicon chips to hold it all. Both Micron andMicrosoft are funding DNA storage projects. But perhaps
no company is pushing harder than Twist.
Six years ago Twist figured out how to ramp up the
process of making bespoke DNA. While many traditional
machines make 96 short strands of DNA at a time, Twist’s
robots can make a million, depositing microscopic drops
of DNA’s building blocks onto silicon chips. But at $1,000
per megabyte, it’s still too costly for storing data at scale.
As of September, Twist was finalizing a two-year con-
tract with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects
Activity, an organization within the Office of the Direc-
tor of National Intelligence. The objective: to lower the
cost of DNA data storage to as little as $100 per giga-
byte. Twist’s ultimate goal? $100 per terabyte. Leproust
says that's at least three years out. “We’re at the point
in society where we’re throwing away stuff because we
can’t afford to store it,” she says. “But if you put it in DNA,
then it will last forever.” —MEGAN MOLTENIBIOTECH
Emily
Leproust
CEO / Twist Bioscience
Engineering DNA to store
data—forever.