DNA Data Storage

Storage is the backbone of life, technology, and progress. From ants storing food to humans safeguarding digital memories, the quest for efficient storage solutions has shaped our evolution. With modern technology generating staggering amounts of data daily―from cameras, the Internet, phones, and sensors―the need for an innovative, dense storage medium has never been more pressing. Imagine this: by 2030, the data generated by the Internet of Things could reach the unimaginable scale of geophytes (1 billion exabytes). Traditional storage methods are quickly running out of space and affordability. Enter DNA-based data storage, a groundbreaking solution at the forefront of scientific innovation.

This transformative book explores the potential of synthetic DNA to revolutionize data storage. Did you know that scientists have demonstrated storing up to 455 exabytes of data in just one gram of synthetic DNA? That's the equivalent of storing the entire Internet many times over in a droplet of liquid! The book takes readers on an exhilarating journey through three comprehensive sections: the basics of DNA storage, cutting-edge DNA codecs, and the emerging possibilities of this futuristic technology.

Whether you’re a researcher, tech enthusiast, or simply curious about the next big thing, this book is your gateway to understanding how the blueprint of life is becoming the blueprint of tomorrow’s data storage. Fasten your seatbelt―the future of data storage awaits!

Manish K. Gupta received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 2000. Over his distinguished academic career, he has held academic positions at several prestigious institutions worldwide, including the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2000-2002); National University of Singapore (2001); Arizona State University, USA (2002-2004); The Ohio State University, USA (2004-2005); Queen's University, Canada (2005-2006); Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (IZI) in Germany (2019) and King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia (2019). He has spent a significant tenure at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT) from 2006 to 2024. From August 2024, Dr. Gupta serves as the Director of Academics and a Senior Professor at Kaushalya: The Skill University (KSU), Government  of Gujarat. A senior member of IEEE and an active member of the IEEE Computer Society, he has received an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor Award 2022. Dr. Gupta has made significant contributions to the Indo-American Education Society, Education USA serving as a board member from 2008 to 2015. Dr. Gupta is also a founder of the DA-IICT Centre for Entrepreneurship and Incubation (DCEI), a section 8 not-for-profit company, since 2006 and served as the chairman of the DCEI executive council from July 2016 to March 2019. His expertise is frequently sought by government committees on start-ups and innovations. He has served as Scientific Expert and Evaluator for research funding agencies such as the European Science Foundation (ESF), Dutch Research Council, Swiss National Science Foundation, CSIR (India), and the British Academy/Royal Society, contributing to expert peer review and evaluation of competitive research proposals across disciplines. Recognized for his contributions to the field, Dr. Gupta was selected as a featured reviewer in the February 2016 issue of ACM Computing Reviews. He is actively involved in setting standards in DNA data storage through Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), USA and contributes to the JPEG DNA standards of the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG1 Committee. He has also been serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation, Springer and AIMS Electronics and Electrical Engineering, AIMS Press since 2017. His areas of interest are the elegant applications of mathematics in emerging technologies: DNA digital data storage, DNA computing, chemical computing, coding theory, quantum computing, quantum machine learning, quantum error correction, cryptography, blockchain, quantum algorithms, synthetic biology, DNA nanotechnology, bioinformatics. His group (https://www.guptalab.org/) is well known for developing open-source software products (for example, DNA Pen, 3DNA, DNA Cloud) in DNA nanotechnology. His DNA storage project was shortlisted as one of the top 5 innovations for the Prime Minister (India and Israel) demo at the India- Israel Innovation Initiative in January 2018.

Ping Zhi is currently an associate researcher in Warshel Institute for Computational Biology and a lecturer of School of Medicine, the Chinese university of HongKong, Shenzhen. He earned both his B.Sc and Ph.D from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. From 2017 to 2024, Dr. Ping worked as a Chief Scientist and Associate Researcher at BGI-Research, Shenzhen.  His research currently focuses on development of transcoding algorithms and integrated systems of DNA data storage, bioinformatics analysis of synthetic biology and other BT-IT converging directions. He has published a number of papers in prestigious journals including Nature Computational Science, Advanced Science, National Science Review, GigaScience, etc. He has been invited as reviewer for journals including Nature Communications, Bioinformatics, BMC Bioinformatics, Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, etc. and is now a Youth Editorial Board Member of GigaScience. He is also a member of the Committee of Computational Synthetic Biology of China.

Abdur Rasool is a leading researcher at the intersection of artificial intelligence and bioinformatics. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Applied Technology from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (UCAS) in 2024 and is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. There, he develops multimodal machine learning models for neurobehavioral diagnosis. His extensive work also includes pioneering research in DNA data storage. Dr. Rasool has authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals, including Small Methods, and serves as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Bioinformatics. His contributions have been recognized with multiple honors, including the IEEE Region 10 Best Paper Award, the Excellent International Graduate Award from UCAS, and grants from the Shenzhen government. Committed to mentorship and innovation, his research bridges theoretical AI advancements with transformative applications in computational biology.

Ben Cao research focuses on the intersection of computer science and biotechnology, with a commitment to solving biological problems using AI. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Dalian University of Technology (DLUT) and A*STAR and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oklahoma. His work spans areas such as DNA data storage and security, coding theory, gene expression, artificial intelligence, and large language models (LLM). Dr. Cao has published over 15 papers as the first author or Corresponding Author in international journals such as Cell Reports, IEEE Transactions, and BIB, including one ESI hot paper and two ESI highly cited papers. He actively contributes to the academic community, serving as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Bioinformatics, and has been invited to review for approximately 30 SCI journals, including IEEE Transactions and others. 

Pierre-Yves Burgi graduated in computer engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland in 1986, and obtained his PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Geneva in 1992. His studies were followed by a 5-year post-doctoral fellowship in neuroscience in the area of visual perception at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, USA, and at the Brain and Cognition Unit of Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France. From 1997 to 2003, he worked in the Microelectronics Division of the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology, Neuchâtel, where he conducted applied research in the field of bio-inspired artificial vision based on VLSI microcircuits. In 2003, he joined the University of Geneva as Deputy Director of the Information Systems Division, where he headed the New Technologies Unit until 2017. Between 2015 and 2020, as part of the Swiss program “Scientific information: Access, processing and safeguarding”, he led a national project that resulted in the development of a platform for the long-term preservation of research data (olos.swiss). He currently heads the Research and Scientific Information Unit, in charge of high-performance computing, and long-term data storage and archiving. Since 2020, he has been involved in DNA data storage, becoming a member of the DNA data storage alliance in 2021, and initiating the DNAMIC (DNA Microfactory for Autonomous Archiving) European project in 2022 to design an autonomous prototype solution based on a low-energy microfactory for end-to-end DNA data archiving. Pierre-Yves Burgi has authored over 60 publications in international journals and academic conferences in the fields of computer vision, neuroscience, modeling and simulation of natural processes, long-term data archiving, and, more recently, DNA data storage.