A technology explored since 2012 to store large volumes of information, DNA data storage converts digital files into chains of chemical bases (A, C, G and T). Artificially synthesized, these nucleotide chains are preserved as stable molecules.
While today’s available storage devices—such as tubes, plates, and encapsulated powder—work well in laboratories, they do not scale to industrial volumes because they require large numbers of individual containers, take up a lot of space, and make automation, precise data addressing, and operational control difficult.
In a September 2025 study, researchers at the South China University of Science and Technology propose a new format for transforming DNA from laboratory material into a physically scalable and addressable storage medium: the classic cassette tape.
The media used — made with a membrane composed of nylon and polyester — was chemically treated to act as a “scaffold” on which the molecules are fixed and protected. Although thin and flexible, the material serves as a mechanical support for DNA.
In the same way that traditional cassette tapes — widely used in the 1980s and 1990s — had fixed tracks, the new DNA tapes have more than 500,000 physically accessible data partitions. This allows a high-speed barcode reader to identify the exact location of any file in fractions of a second.
How does the DNA cassette tape work?
Restricted to cutting-edge laboratories. The great difference of the new discovery is in automation and compression. Scientists have created a compact drive — the size of a shoebox — capable of searching, reading and writing data, without human intervention.
The reduction in media volume is a direct result of the extremely high informational density of DNA: it is estimated that a single gram of this material can contain up to 455 exabytes of data, the equivalent of almost all monthly internet traffic worldwide. Furthermore, the durability of the media can reach thousands of years.
The “magic” starts to happen when the data is “written”, which, in this case, consists of depositing small drops of synthetic DNA in the partitions of the tape, each of them corresponding to a physical storage location. Called Deposit-Many-Recover-Many, the system allows you to erase and rewrite information in the same physical location.
To prevent the degradation of this informational molecular material over time, researchers developed protection applied directly to the location where it is deposited. It is a crystalline layer formed by metal-organic structures, called ZIFs, which function as a type of insulating “scale” against humidity and heat.
In this system, digital information is no longer represented by 0 and 1 and starts to be encoded by letters of the genetic code (A, C, G and T). This data is organized on nylon and polyester tape with barcodes, in which the clear areas absorb the DNA, while the black, hydrophobic bands prevent the material from spreading and mixing between different “addresses”.
Possible applications of the new technology
One of the most immediate applications of the new technology is the archiving of cold data, that is, data that almost never needs to be accessed, but must be preserved for long periods, such as historical files, old backups, scientific or legal records. In this case, the priority is durability and low maintenance costs, even with slower access.
This suggests the creation of centers for big data sustainable, since the DNA strand eliminates the need for continuous energy consumption and complex refrigeration systems. In a future scenario, the system could create personal data hubs, capable of concentrating an individual’s entire digital memory into a small cartridge that lasts for generations.
Despite its proven capacity to store large amounts of information, the DNA tape still has very low performance when compared to HDs, SSDs or conventional magnetic tapes. In experimental measurements carried out in the study, copying a file of a few hundred kilobytes took tens of minutes.
According to the article, although reading DNA is currently relatively cheap, its synthesis — that is, chemical manufacturing of sequences — is still a very expensive process, which makes making the technology unfeasible for the end consumer. Furthermore, this synthesis is slow, which further increases operational costs when dealing with large volumes of data.
Be that as it may, the resignification of the cassette tape goes far beyond simple nostalgia. With cheaper DNA synthesis and reading processes, we may be witnessing a paradigm shift: a time when our digital files will no longer be recorded in electricity and silicon, but .
