robinstar1574's Journal: DNA based hard drive

Is it possible to make a hard drive that stores data in DNA strands? I have a theory. Each pair of dna can represent a 1 or a 0, and we have a way to bring this DNA to a reader in which can read the DNA with extreme accuracy.

The reader is the problem

[damn_registrars]

Most sequencers on the market today that can sequence with any degree of reasonable speed and accuracy rely on either amplification of the DNA (the "Sanger Method") or massively parallel sequencing (the "454 method"). So while the speed and accuracy is continuing to improve, we still aren't nearly to the level that would be needed for something like a hard drive.

You may want to look into something like The Archon Genomics X Prize [xprize.org], which has the goal set at "100 human genomes, 10 days, > $10K (USD) per

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[damn_registrars]

I don't know if you're suggesting that $1M is or is not a lot of money, but I can tell you that $1M doesn't even cover the instrument cost right now. Even if you bought on the used market, a good sequencer can easily push or exceed six figures [grizzlyanalytical.com] (look under "oligosequencers"), and none of those on their own could even hope to do a single genome in that timeframe, even averaging 1x coverage. And I don't have access to information on what the 454 sequencers are going for these days...

However if you look at

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[damn_registrars]

However, I am not looking at identifying genes

A lot of genomics comes down to finding single base pair differences - or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) - which often make enormous differences in individuals. One excellent example is Sickle-Cell Disease (or Sickle-Cell Anemia), which is caused by one SNP in a gene that is around 330 bases long.

I am looking at having each seperate nucleotide have a different bit value

Unfortunately writing DNA becomes a problem at that point. Most DNA is produced by a polymerase with a template strand. A fair bit of engineering might be needed to produce DNA de novo, unless you want