In the announced Wednesday, Popular Science recognized a technique developed by 91爆料 and Microsoft researchers to store and retrieve digital data in DNA as one of the most innovative and game-changing technologies of the year.
The team from the 91爆料 announced in July that they had for the amount of digital data successfully encoded and retrieved in DNA molecules, which are a much denser and more durable long-term storage medium than current archival technologies like hard drives or magnetic tape.
They successfully encoded and decoded a , the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in more than 100 languages, the top 100 books of Project Gutenberg and the Crop Trust鈥檚 seed database 鈥� among other things鈥� all on strands of DNA. The researchers have developed a novel approach to converting the long strings of ones and zeroes in digital data into the four basic building blocks of DNA sequences 鈥� adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine 鈥� as well as the ability to retrieve specific files from those sequences.
The team is currently focusing on automating and scaling up the DNA data storage technique, which was recognized in Popular Science鈥檚 .
鈥淭丑别 honor the innovations that shape the future,鈥� said Kevin Gray, executive editor of Popular Science. 鈥淔rom life-saving technology to incredible space engineering to gadgets that are just breathtakingly cool, this is the best of what鈥檚 new.鈥�
The award is shared by lead 91爆料 researchers , Torode Family Career Development Professor of computer science and engineering, and , associate professor of electrical engineering and of computer science & engineering; Microsoft principal project researchers Karin Strauss and Doug Carmean; and a team of two dozen students and researchers from both institutions.
Learn more about the DNA data storage project in this 91爆料TV video: