The building blocks of life, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), can be used for computational advantage, posits Dr. James Banal, postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Biological Engineering, in the Bathe Lab. 

“I work on the wackiest things in computing and storage right now, which is quantum computing and DNA data storage,” says James.

From ultra-dense, ultra-long storage of digital data (think: storing exabytes for fifty years) to building a 'frozen zoo' or 'species time capsule' to preserve living components of our planet in case of catastrophe, DNA storage and computing leverages the life within all of us to improve not only our lives, but those who will inherit our future Earth.


Show Notes

• Episode Page (including Transcript): https://toughtechtoday.com/computing-with-the-building-blocks-of-life-with-james-banal/
• James Banal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-banal/

Topic Timecodes02:16 Entering Mark Bathe’s Lab

03:50 Compressing a datacenter into a sugar cube

06:15 Writing DNA data

08:17 Archiving data for decades

09:49 How data is stored and accessed with DNA

14:22 An advantage: High replication

15:28 Working on ‘super hard’ problems

16:30 Commercializing DNA storage

18:06 Evolving a PhD research statement

19:51 Ten-Year-Old James: “You’re crazy!”

20:45 Counting cells for Mom and Dad

23:26 On failure, quitting, and the low points 

27:22 Abraham Lincoln and being skeptical of a positive signal

31:08 Applying machine learning to DNA datasets

33:35 Who may buy this

34:45 ‘Datageddon’ and the post-silicon world

39:44 Storing the world’s annual data in a cubic meter

42:17 When will we see DNA computing deployed?

45:25 Taking a snapshot of all species in the world

46:33 ELI5: Never have to delete anything again

49:12 The ‘Frozen Zoo’, ‘Frozen Ark’, and Australian wildfires

53:59 Final points