Computer memory made out of salmon DNA

A crack team of nanoengineers and biologists have created a non-volatile memory device out of salmon DNA and silver nanoparticles.

The memory is write-once-read-many (WORM), just like an optical disc. Basically, the researchers created a thin polymer film containing salmon DNA and silver nanoparticles. The DNA molecules are arranged in a regular pattern. By shining UV light on the biopolymer, the silver nanoparticles cluster around the DNA. This process seems to be permanent and irreversible, and according to the researchers the data is stored indefinitely.

To read the data, the biopolymer is sandwiched between two electrodes and the DNA-silver bits are read by passing a voltage through them. The “read” voltage is just 2.6V, which is comparable to existing DRAM and flash memory.

The concept of using DNA as the basis for a computer device might seem odd, but it’s actually a sphere of nanoengineering that has been steadily developing since IBM published a paper detailing its use of DNA “scaffolds” to lay out a computer chip, instead of lithography. DNA readily bonds with metal ions, and it seems to be relatively easy to accurately place DNA molecules on a substrate.

With regards to the salmon-based WORM memory, the researchers say that this technique could eventually be used to create optical storage devices. Because electricity is used to read the data instead of a laser, though, we are probably looking at optical chips with built in circuitry, rather than discs. The fact that data is written using UV light means that there could be a plasmonic application for the biopolymer, too.

Whether DNA-based chips can be more cost effective than DVDs or SD cards, however, remains to be seen.

Computer memory made out of salmon DNA