How to store the vast quantity of data that will be generated in the coming years and decades has been the subject of numerous white papers, news reports and scientific publications. Action is urgently required because the demand for more storage capacity is incompatible with the need to drastically reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuels to avert further changes to the climate. Newer, more efficient, and sustainable ways of storing the world’s data are needed and DNA is seen as the most likely solution due to its extraordinarily high information density. Algorithms to encode binary data into DNA and convert sequences of bases back into 1s and Os already exist while very advanced technologies for reading DNA sequences quickly and faithfully are revolutionizing the life sciences, ushering in a new era of precision medicine. These technologies can also be utilized for low-cost reading of data stored in the form of DNA. The thing that is most needed to address the storage challenge is a tool to write data quickly and economically into DNA form and do so in a way that is deployable in data centers or other settings.
The Hyperion project will prove the concept of affordable, scalable data storage with DNA by developing a world beating writing technology based on the precise, robust control of enzymatic DNA synthesis with a very dense semiconductor integrated circuit.
DNA Script is a research-intensive company with headquarters in Paris, France, that is reinventing how DNA is made and used. Over the past 10 years the company has developed a world leading position in benchtop, same day DNA synthesis through a patented enzymatic synthesis cycle to produce long DNA strands at high purity, thus providing a faster and environmental-friendly alternative to the outsourced, chemical intensive DNA synthesis model.
Recently, together with researchers at Harvard University and the Broad Institute, the company demonstrated for the first time that DNA can be synthesized enzymatically in a controlled base-by-base manner using an integrated circuit.
Hyperion research project will show that very high-density enzymatic DNA synthesis is feasible and will demonstrate proof of concept of high-density chip multiplexing, which will be essential to achieve performances commensurate with the best-in-class technologies (>terabyte capacity and MB/s writing speed). Once the proof of principle is validated, the Hyperion approach will be the basis for deployable storage technologies that can eventually scale into the exabyte regime and beyond with reduced physical footprint, power and cost requirements relative to conventional storage technologies.
