Information decay and enzymatic information recovery for DNA data storage.

Synthetic DNA has been proposed as a storage medium for digital information due to its high theoretical storage density and anticipated long storage horizons. However, under all ambient storage conditions, DNA undergoes a slow chemical decay process resulting in nicked (broken) DNA strands, and the information stored in these strands is no longer readable. In this work we design an enzymatic repair procedure, which is applicable to the DNA pool prior to readout and can partially reverse the damage.

Synthetic DNA applications in information technology.

Synthetic DNA is a growing alternative to electronic-based technologies in fields such as data storage, product tagging, or signal processing. Its value lies in its characteristic attributes, namely Watson-Crick base pairing, array synthesis, sequencing, toehold displacement and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) capabilities. In this review, we provide an overview of the most prevalent applications of synthetic DNA that could shape the future of information technology.

DNA synthesis for true random number generation.

The volume of securely encrypted data transmission required by today's network complexity of people, transactions and interactions increases continuously. To guarantee security of encryption and decryption schemes for exchanging sensitive information, large volumes of true random numbers are required. Here we present a method to exploit the stochastic nature of chemistry by synthesizing DNA strands composed of random nucleotides.

Reading and writing digital data in DNA.

Because of its longevity and enormous information density, DNA is considered a promising data storage medium. In this work, we provide instructions for archiving digital information in the form of DNA and for subsequently retrieving it from the DNA. In principle, information can be represented in DNA by simply mapping the digital information to DNA and synthesizing it.