A Miles Davis classic became the first song coded into synthetic DNA
There was a time when the physical space required to store a piece of information was simply enormous. The first digital computer, the 1946 ENIAC, took up over 1,800 square feet, contained about 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed something like 50 tons. In the last 40 years, huge leaps in personal computing have allowed that space to shrink to microscopic levels. We’re now at the point where scientists can store music in a strand of DNA.
About five years ago, Pitchfork reported that Twist Bioscience had partnered with Microsoft and The University of Washington to successfully store a song in a strand of human DNA. The first track chosen for the revolutionary project was Miles Davis’ ‘Tutu’, which was sourced from a performance at the Montreaux Jazz Festival. The title track from Davis’ 1986 album of the same name ‘Tutu’ was written by Marcus Miller, who had asked producer Tommy LiPuma if he could provide some music for the upcoming album. Miller bought in some ideas and showed LiPuma, who suggested that he develop the demos on his own rather than with a band. Relying on intuition, Miller made great use of drum machines and synthesisers, crafting two scintillating basslines, which slink beneath Davis’ soaring trumpet line.
‘Tutu’ was a complete game-changer, which is perhaps why the folks at Twist Bioscience were drawn to the recording. The research facility dubbed its own innovation the “future of digital storage”. It may well be that. The space required to archive the entire Montreaux vault, which comprises thousands of hours of audio and video, would take up a space no larger than a grain of rice.
At this juncture, you might well be asking yourself, “but what’s the point?” A good question, Watson. According to a white paper published by Twist Bioscience: “Digital data generation is increasing exponentially, and estimates suggest that the amount of new data being generated each year has already surpassed the data storage capacity of current technologies.”
In other words, we need to find another way of storing our data. That’s where Twist comes in. “DNA presents an alternative technology for the storage of digital information due to several attractive properties. DNA is an extremely stable molecule, it takes up very little physical space, and since it makes up the human genome, the technology needed to read it back will never become obsolete”.
DNA data storage technology won’t be available for consumer products for a few years yet. The biggest challenges facing Twist Bioscience are cost and efficiency. Encoding data is an incredibly slow process, a million times slower, in fact, than the timescales boasted by a silicon memory chip. Maybe that’s a good thing; I don’t fancy a world where the entire internet could, theoretically, be loaded into my DNA. It’s all a bit too 2001: A Space Odyssey for my tastes. Still, you can’t fault them for their choice of music. Miles rules.
