The article “The libraries of the future will be made of DNA” written by de Groot (2018) is very interesting, intriguing and it sounds like a cutting edge technological revolution, futuristic and it made me think “is it really possible?”. Well, anything is possible, as de Groot (2018) said that there is research underway focused on DNA as a medium to store information which is called “Nuclear Acid Memory (NAM)” conducted by many scientists.

This revolutionary idea and research can give us, especially for library and information industry many potentials or benefits in terms of future information storage that does not require a lot of space and it will provide long term access to information, as DNA is a natural thing that is easy to be produced and accessed/read.  Because of its small size, it will not take too much room to store it, it will last or exist for a very long period of time, it is also strong if it is maintained and kept properly in the dark, dry, and cold area/room (de Groot, 2018).

But how is the information or data stored on DNA?. According to de Groot (2018), the information/data is converted into GATC sequence which is the basis of a DNA molecule or DNA chain, then we will be able to read the information by converting this DNA chain back into the original sequence/format. This technology is still under development, and requires further research, so far researchers/scientists have stored musical data by Miles Davis and Deep Purple, the scientists have also stored an image in GIF format in DNA form (de Groot, 2018).

We, as an information society are producing very large quantities of information and data, we also live in a digital world with an abundance of digital information that we have created such as digital documents, videos, and digital photographs.  As information professionals, we face challenges that digital data has a short life span and maintaining access to it comes with challenges as it revolves around the rapid changes of digital technological development where we constantly face obsolescence in media, hardware, and software in a short period of times (Harvey & Oliver, 2016). The potentials offered by DNA as an information storage will hopefully give an answer/solution in ongoing preservation efforts to tackle challenges to keep and maintain massive amounts of information and data in terms of limited space, durability, usability, longevity and long term accessibility for future generations.

 

References

de Groot, J. (2018, January 5). The libraries of the future will be made of DNA. [blog post]. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/the-libraries-of-the-future-will-be-made-of-dna-86274

Harvey, D. R., & Oliver, G. (2016). Digital curation (2nd ed.). Chicago: ALA Neal-Schuman. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

National Human Genome Research Institute. (n.d.). ACGT. Retrieved from https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/acgt