Can DNA be used to store data?
Can DNA be used to store data?
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How nucleic acid memory could be used to store data in DNA

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 17 min

Gurtej Sandhu, a senior fellow and director at memory chip maker Micron Technology, is exploring whether DNA can be a storage medium. You read that right. Sandhu believes that DNA storage, or Nucleic Acid Memory (NAM, as he calls it) could be fast and long-lasting.

This is something out of science fiction. Or maybe it’s so wacky that science fiction writers haven’t even thought of it yet. But as Moore’s Law slows down, multibillion dollar companies such as Boise, Idaho-based Micron are exploring ideas for new kinds of memory.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.