Long-Term DNA Storage Based on Archival Standards

With its unrivaled data density, longevity, and low-energy requirements, the use of DNA is set to revolutionize archive preservation. As long as there is life, humanity will master DNA, so the risk of technological obsolescence will be limited, unlike with magnetic and optical devices, which impose frequent migration cycles. With today’s genomic technologies, the most promising application is “write-once-read-rarely” (WORR). But to guarantee that the information stored in DNA can be accessed and interpreted in the future, technological aspects alone are not sufficient, and DNA must be integrated into a resilient archiving system. Our approach is based on the ISO 14721 standard, which provides the concepts of self-description requiring the incorporation of metadata into the DNA strands themselves, or a human- or machine-readable “dictionary” that describes how to reconstruct the original information. These mechanisms are essential to ensure that archived information can not only be recovered in the event of system failure, but also correctly understood and interpreted in the future, whether or not the original hardware, software or operating environment still exists. To illustrate these different concepts, an ISO-14721-compliant end-to-end DNA data storage system is presented, enabling archivists to use the system with a minimum of manual operations.